Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN BEN 10 OR AKAME GA KILL. THEY BELONG TO THEIR RIGHTFUL OWNERS. BEN 10 IS OWNED BY MAN OF ACTION AND AKAME GA KILL IS OWNED BY SQUARE ENIX.
WARNING: THIS IS GOING TO BE A DARKER CHAPTER THAN USUAL.
Author's Notes: Hello everyone! This is MegaRdaniels coming at you with a brand new chapter. Fully planned out and ready to go. I am gonna prepare to end this story in a matter of weeks. I'm not gonna rush it or anything. However, what I will do is that I will start giving Omniverse a chance for the first time. I always thought that it was too...lighter. But you know what, I am willing to give it a chance. If you have any ideas for a sequel or a reboot, please let me know.
Until then...I hope you all enjoy this fic.
PEACE!
ライオンのビジョンと心臓を殺す
CHAPTER LVII: Kill the Vision and the Heart of the Lion
HER FEAR THE the young changeling hadn't changed. Her pure hatred for the teen hero hadn't wavered. In fact...it escalated. From the moment that he arrived to this moment, her sol mission was to annihilate Ben Tennyson from the face of the Earth. She wanted to expunge him from the human consciousness, cleanse him from the hands of God that created him and send him off to a train straight Hell.
Her obsession became a drug, her hatred...the extension of her soul...her humanity...whatever left of it that was. Whatever sort of shroud of humanity she had left was either blanketed or was constantly burning in eternal hellfire. So, it wasn't that surprising that when she finally opened her eyes, after being transferred to an unknown space by an unknown being, her fears were finally realized...or lest she thought it was.
She opened her eyes, her mind, still in the state of sleep was awakened by the jury by the peers of nothingness.
There was no sight.
No hearing.
No taste.
No touch.
It was just a void. A void of nothingness courted by none other than the Changeling...or at least once again, at least she thought. She turned left and right. Calling out anyone that could hear her – including her beloved Imperial Arms she affectionately named as...
"Korro?" her voice echoed. No response. She looked around; no one and nothing had shaped or responded to her calls.
"Korro?" she called again. Once more, no reaction. No attention. Nothing.
"General Esdeath? Wave? Run? Kurome? Anyone around? Hello?" she called for them all; she called them in a loop. The only thing that answered her was the black walls around her bouncing her voice like a tennis ball to the ground.
She winced; she looked around and saw no one. "Ben Tennyson! You fucking monster! Where...where am I? Who...what? How...Ben Tennyson!" she screamed, her voice cracked as she cursed his name as she swam around to no where.
"Where are you, you coward? You human virus! You cunt!?" she screamed, turning frantically. "Where the fuck are you?"
"Little Bean?" said a softer, warmer voice. Seryu's eyes winced. Her body trembled. She froze as her left eye twitched without her noticing. Behind her stood a young, Imperial Officer. A young man of character with a long bushy facial hair, well kept, had auburn brown eyes, much more like Seryu's but darker. He had an athletically-built frame, and a well-lined brows.
"Little Bean? Is that you?" the voice cracked a little bit.
Seryu slowly turned.
"This is a trick. This is a trick. This IS A TRICK! Yeah...that's right I am..." she then turned and saw someone she hadn't seen for years.
Her father.
"Seryu? Honey?" Her father slowly approached her, like a zookeeper to an injured panda bear. She turned around, sniffing around...because of course she does that.
"Is that...is that you?" he asked.
Seryu paused, longingly looking at her father, never mind not even noticing the background changing from a void black space to what looked like a small bedroom. There wasn't much in it but the basic essentials. Sun was shining bright right by the window, her father was by the door. She looked around, almost as if she was in the presence of heaven. A halcyonic feeling of bliss and relief.
"Dad?" she broke.
"Little Bean? Oh my God!" her and her father ran to each other and hugged each other tightly.
"Daddy!" Seryu cried, her arms shook as she tried to squeeze him just in case he was real. Each feeling from his back, each breath he took that landed on her neck, each breath she took it felt...real.
Was it real? Was it all a trick? Her rational mind, if she had something similar to that left, was turned off as she was overwhelmed by her nostalgia...and her emotions, flooding her with doubt, sadness, loneliness.
"Daddy..." Seryu said as they broke the hug.
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Long after their reunion, her father gave a slightly calm, and quiet Seryu a cup of tea. Seryu had some time to think things through. The environment, the lighting...what was all this for? Her arms still shook, angry and confused about what has happened. She looked at the swirling green tea rotating clockwise as she looked at her reflection in the tea. For a minute, an image of her as a little girl, to her with the crazy eyes from the day that she and Ben met for the first time.
"Little Bean?" she turned to her father, as he sat next to her, "Something wrong?"
Seryu took a minute to respond as her eyes were locked on the tea. She darted her eyes right then back at the tea.
"You died in the line of duty," she said; "How am I able to..."
"Talk to me?" he asked, "I don't know. One moment, I was floating in a empty white seam listening to bird sing, reading a nice book thinking about you and your mother, just underneath the tree that you and I used to hang out with before I was deployed."
"The Cherry Blossom tree near Kyraku!" Seryu said.
Her Father nodded, "When I was there, I would watch over you. I'll send you signals to keep you safe. Seryu...I wanna say I'm sorry," he said, breaking his voice as he put his tea down.
Seryu was confused. Why was her father apologizing to her. He had been nothing but good to her; a role model before she was administered to the Imperial Police. To her, her father was her hero – a savior. So why was he apologizing to her?
"What's wrong?" Seryu asked.
"I should have told you when I was with you about what happened to your mother. I knew I should have never shielded you from her passing...her murder."
Seryu clenched her fist, her anger coming crawling back. She stood up, not facing her father but the wall, "It was the Rebels wasn't it?" she accused, her arms crossed. "Damn Night Raid!"
"No," her father said calmly. "It wasn't Night Raid. It wasn't The Revolutionary Army, or anything emblemized to that organization.
"You're lying." she said, her face turning red. Rage boiled up like a pot on a hot stove. Her arms trickled, shaken. "It's all them! I saw them with my TWO EYES! MY OWN TWO EYES! And you..." She turned to see her father no longer with her; in fact, her whole environment changed. It went back to the time where she tried not to remember. A time where she repressed deep in her mind.
Her room was dark. Moonlight shone through her window. She looked down and discovered that she no longer wore her Jaeger uniform; in fact, she was wearing a long, pink dress with flowery patterns all around, laced in white. Her hair was wrapped in a neat bun and bangs, tied in a pony tail.
Another thing she noticed was that there was snow.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
"Father?" she asked for him. Again no reaction or ...
CRASH. Glass broke from nearby. She winced. A beak of curiosty poked on her. She slowly left her old bedroom and tip-toed in the wooden hallway. The halls...coated in blood and holes.
She looked down and saw a trail of blood leading to the front door. Her eyes widened to see her mother, on the ground drowning in a pool of blood. Her eyes shot open, lifeless as her arms twitched.
Aside from seeing her Mom on the ground, what shocked her the most was seeing one of the most respected men she trained under, loved, and held in high regard.
Towering over her corpse was a large, muscular man with black hair that was graying near his temples. He had an unusual hairstyle with four ponytails or braids on the back of his head wrapped in white cloth. He had a large, star-shaped scar over his missing left eye, while his remaining eye was red with a black sclera. His teeth were shown to be quite sharp, which give him a monster/demon-like aspect.
"Fucking bitch," Ogre grunted as he drank his last shot of alcohol. He threw the bottle at the corpse, pulled out his cigar, lit it and stared back her.
"Soon, no one will remember who you are," he said as he flicked the match he used to light up his cigar at the body, lighting her on fire. Soon, the flames started to spread on top of the pool of blood she lied. Her eyes, still opened as Ogre closed the door. Seryu, frozen from that couldn't believe it. And, with the sheer act of cruelty, she had to witness it...all over again. Fate's cruel hand scooped the soil of those memories buried deep inside her brain, not even wanting to be dug up.
And like clockwork, all around her, she saw nothing but the crimes and atrocities Ogre had done, including the more recent crimes revolving around telling Tatsumi to his face that he was gonna kill the executed fiancee's wife and her children. After a few moments of exposure...she collapsed.
The environment reconverted back to, instead of a black void, to a white void. The only difference was that she was underneath the cherry blossom tree.
Seryu's glued eyes, now lied shut wept a riverbed of silent tears as they slithered down her face. As the wind brushed on her hair, he heard her father's voice once again.
"He wasn't called 'Ogre the Demon' for nothing," her Father said appearing right besides her as she collapsed right by the trunk of the tree, hugging her legs.
"I was praising a criminal? The person I looked up to the most was my Mom's murderer?"
"Before he became an Imperial Lieutenant, he was an officer like me. He was in love with your mother; he wanted her to herself, even if it came to the point of him murdering you."
Seryu turned back to her father as he continued on, "So...he and I fought because I wasn't gonna have it where he killed you to get to her. So when he killed me, he tried to force himself to her to which she fought back, gouging out his eyes out. Ogre, being the monster as he was, killed her, and burned down the house.
"But I was in school, waiting on you," she said.
"My sister came and picked you up. After that, it was just a matter of time for when the Capital paid your Aunt a large sum of money to keep the whole thing quiet."
"So everything I've been told was...a lie?" Seryu broke, her face looking straight towards the white void and way from the tree.
"When I was with you, I always preached justice, did I not?"
"Yes."
"Justice is balanced in a way of just action; vengeance is a means to an end," he said.
Seryu began to recount all the horrors she had done. She winced. She blinked. Her skin became pale. Regret. Pain. Anguish. All the colors of the pangs of consciousness painted across her face; her eyes were blank. Her mind was blank.
"I'm...a monster," Seryu said. "I killed dozens of people just for the sake of a philosophy that I didn't even uphold! I wasn't following the trail of righteousness, but wickedness."
"I wish it was that easy to tell you," her father said.
"You never had the chance to," Seryu said.
"Ogre's a monster, but, he treated me...so...had he figured out that I was..."
"I'm sorry," her father said, "Life's not black and white. Sometimes good exists in the darkest of souls. I wish I can explain, but...it's..."
"Complicated," Seryu said, "Like everything else." She started think, her mind, climbing back to the particular boy, that then was on her hit-list, on the top tier to kill became curious.
"But if I'm the villain, what makes this guy the hero?" Seryu asked, now with anger coming out of her mouth.
The environment turned black...then for a moment she started seeing stars. She looked forward and for a moment, she became confused. Right in front of her was a motor vehicle.
She nodded her head left, confused and left curious as to where she was. This didn't look like the Capital, it didn't take her long for her to figure out that this was not the Empire at all.
She was in the middle of the woods. Nothing surprising, nothing shocking. It was night time in the middle of the woods. She deduced that she could have been anywhere outside of the Capital.
"Where am I?" Seryu asked looking around.
She didn't see the Capital walls anywhere so she could not be nearby. Could it be that she could be near Night Raid's base. Couldn't be. They were way too secretive even for her to find out. It wouldn't take that long for her to find out where they were, but it would take some amount of time for her to find out where the Night Raid base was.
She was about to walk around and explore...until she heard a voice, a young child voice!
"Oh man, this is going to be the worse summer vacation ever!" whined a young 10-year old boy who a black-striped, white shirt with short sleeves, military green cargo pants with side pockets with a black belt hidden under his shirt, and black and white sneakers with black stripes.
"What the..." Seryu blinked.
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Meanwhile, Tatsumi and Mine were confused as Argit was walking around aimlessly. The two Night Raiders were stumped as to what went on, what was taking Ben so long, and why was this Argit person decided to invade Seryu's mind.
"Okay, let me get this straight!" Argit began; "You two belong to a group of assassins known as Night Raid, and you guys are tasked on bringing down a kleptocratic slash authoritarian government held by and I quote, a Child Emperor and Lying Minister?"
Tatsumi and Mine simply nodded.
"That sounds...HARD CORE! And I get to kiss babes! Slice through mutants like tissue paper, and RULE THE EMPIRE with an IRON FIST?"
"Mine?" Tatsumi begged, trying to get Mine to shoot "Argit" in the face.
"Ben is still in there," Mine said.
"Wait...speaking of Ben...has he ever touched these?" Argit said, squeezing Seryu's breasts because why not, he's Argit. "Who, these are soft and sennnnsitive! Hehe!"
Mine, getting increasingly aggravated, immediately put the clip inside of her pumpkin, "Okay, I'mma kill'em."
"SECONDED..." Mine, Tatsumi, and Argit turned to Alien X who turned to them with a hardened look, "EXPEL ARGIT FROM SERYU'S BODY! MOTION CARRIED!"
"What? No bullshit! You can't ..." and with a simple snap, Seryu's body collapsed. Her eyes, still opened; her nows, showing a fiery emerald green once more. She got up, much like a robot.
"Temporal Remote Access Code 12 –– Unwanted Data Error: 0-0-0-1-0. Temporal Access Resumes," Seryu said in multiple voices, creeping out two of the hardened assassins.
"Ben gotta have an explanation for this. Because if scaring us as a prank is part of his plan, it worked!" Mine said.
"Seconded," Tatsumi said.
"SECONDED: TRANSDIMENSIONAL CUSTODY ACCESS GRANTED!" Alien X said as he blinked, causing Seryu to be enveloped in a flash of blinding white light. When the light died down stood Ben Tennyson, now transformed back...but with one horrifying difference.
Seryu was gone.
Before he completely collapsed, Tatsumi and Mine caught him. Ben panted.
"Sorry I took a bit of your time," Ben panted.
"What the hell was that about?" Tatsumi asked, now transferred out of his Incursio uniform.
"Let's just say you won't be seeing her for awhile...a LONG while," Ben said.
"What...do you mean by a long while?" Mine asked, furrowing her brow.
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Lubbock, Najenda, and Leone were terrified by hearing the news of the latest alien Ben showed, and what was worse was that, based off the description from Tatsumi and Mine, she vanished in a flash. Akame was not shocked at all about this; she simply nodded and noted in her head that Alien X was Ben's most powerful alien. Sheele, normally would not be shocked with this, but was with Alien X. She wasn't upset since it also did not phase her. What made her happy was that Seryu was no longer gonna be a problem anymore. Although, she wanted to know where on Earth did he take Seryu.
"Part of me wanted to blink and that's it. No more Seryu. No more Empire," Ben said; "And I wanted to start with Seryu, until I read something on her," and then so, Ben started to tell Night Raid a summary of Seryu's life, a brief description as to what happened.
In his mind, he knew he couldn't verbally convince her about the status of the Empire, so he was left with no other choice.
"So...when Seryu was in your...well...in this space you created in Alien X, you manipulated the space around her...in her mind...through your thoughts on what happened for her to see for herself."
"You became from annoying, to suspect, to scary in a few weeks," Leone said, her mouth hanging down to the floor.
~Had Ben used that Alien X form on me, I wouldn't even be here! Me or my friends! I know that we said it over and over again that we are glad Ben is on our side, because that power is terrifying~ Leone noted, still trying to put her sanity back together.
The fact that hearing that one of your colleagues that you tried to kill could manipulate reality, and so much more, was in fact scary. Najenda was in deep thought. Ben was not just a secret weapon...he was a damn powerhouse!
"Did anyone else see that transformation?" Najenda asked.
Mine, Ben, and Tatsumi nodded no. No one was there. They omitted Argit, but that would be a conversation for another day.
"Ben, can you see me at my office," she left her seat. Ben nodded. He took a deep breath as he tried to follow her, until he felt his hand grabbed by a worried Sheele, who was smiling as reassurance.
"No matter how many forms you turn into, you'll always be my Ben," Sheele said, with a sunny smile. Ben returned the smile.
Akame shared a small smile, her heart opening up more and more, until...
"Boss?" Akame asked.
Najenda stopped.
"Yes Akame."
"If it isn't too much trouble, I would like to accompany you," Akame asked.
Najenda chuckled, "Alright. Both of you. Follow me," Najenda said.
Ben and Akame followed, leaving a smiling Sheele behind, though she was not gonna let Ben go that easily. She was gonna protect him come hell and high water. She wasn't gonna bring a weapon, but she may leer her ears to see whats going on.
This wasn't lost on Leone.
"Hey Sheele?"
Sheele turned, "Yes Leone?"
A/N: I've been sleeping on this for quite awhile. Now its finished and ready to go. Alright, like I said, if you guys liked this chapter, please let me know on the comment box down below until next time!
PEACE!