Celestial's Entertainment

by overlyred

000000

4. 4

Celestial's Entertainment p4

Mia

I dreamed again.

I dreamed… of running through fields of green. Fighting through monsters that returned under the night of every blood red moon.

I argued with my teacher, insistent that we shouldn't just sit there and wait for someone who might never rise to come back. That we should instead grab onto what was left behind and find a way to claw our way back into the world instead of the isolated communities that the world had fallen into.

The Zora in their place of rivers and lakes, Goron in the fiery volcanos, and the Gerudo in their deserts, constantly fighting against the Sheikah that turned their back on their duty.

It filled me with rage and indignation.

100 years of just sitting on our buts, waiting for someone while the world remained in ruins and the Calamity grew stronger every day.

I would not stand for it.

The dreams shifted after that.

I dreamed… of New York. A city that I had only ever visited once, yet it had been one swallowed in the fog of another world.

This one was closer to normal… but it wasn't.

I fought in the streets, with the normal humans sleeping away due to Hypnos' grasp on the city.

Hellhounds, minotaurs, and other monsters charged through the street, traitor demigods at the helm, many of them having been kids that I had grown up with who had the misfortune of being born to a non-Olympian.

I hated it all with a passion.

The useless fights for gods who did not love us as the children that were spurned were trying to earn their recognition through battle.

I hated it, but I still fought all the same.

For what other choice did I have?

Then the dreams ended and the rictus of pain shot into my brain.

"Ay dios mio." I mumble to myself, far more interested in the pounding from the hangover than the memories that had come to me in dreams. They weren't complete yet. But they were there. Worming their way into my head.

Ugh, how much did I have yesterday?

I don't even try to open my eyes, cause I know that my brain would just protest at the light of whatever room I was in. Given the high density of magic in the air though, I was willing to bet it was either the Mansion or the Workshop.

"You're finally awake." I groan as more pain lances at the sound of her voice.

"Becky, please not so loud!" I moan while noticing that Estrella was out and about through our connection, Becky's own emotions a mix of amused and… satisfaction. Ugh, the bitch was enjoying this wasn't she?

"Just magic it away. I know that you can." Is her annoyed response, and part of me is tempted not to do so out of spite.

"Why in the world do you think I can do that?" For the first time, I hear her snort in amusement.

"Please, would you really not have a hangover cure ready? I've seen your stash on Mars remember."

I don't hide the growl in my throat as I change the makeup of my body, getting rid of anything that would leave pain inside of my head. After that, it's just a matter of changing a few things, purging the remaining magical alcohol in my body for more… beneficial matters.

Who knew being able to control your own biology the way that I did could find ways to boost magic production? It was incredibly easy after the number of transformations I had gone through and seeing Amy do something similar with her power.

Though I reckon that I was better at doing it to myself than she was to other people. Mostly due to experience and relying on powers that were mine and not connected to a brain parasite.

"Why are you here Becky?" I finally manage to ground out, the pain finally subsiding as I felt barely a trickle of magic added to the usual flow that surged through me.

"She doesn't know what's going on." Estrella said from her perch on the couch, Corvisquire perched in her lap, scratching his head, the small bird leaning into the finger with a content sigh. "And want's to know where we go from here."

I blink at that and turn my head to Rebecca who wouldn't meet my eyes. I feel something soften in me as I felt the… helplessness and frustration inside of her. Right next to that well of shame that had only grown since we had met.

Even I couldn't help but pity her. Just a little bit.

Sighing, I sit up. "Look, just give me a sec to get dress-" I stop as I feel… surprisingly cold. Looking down, I see that I was wearing nothing more than the sheets on my bed, naked as the day I was born.

Er, rather, as the day whenever the Forge started fucking with my appearance.

I could feel Becky staring at me, attraction that was quickly stomped down with annoyance as she averted her eyes and tossed me a pair of jeans and a blue button-up.

I dress without much more attention to the time locked woman.

Though, I do notice that her shard was connected to Gaia's network.

Good. Most of the remaining Eden shards were slowly being taken over, quickly, quietly, and thanks to that golden assholes idiocy, it wasn't like anyone was going to notice.

Well, perhaps there would be a few that notice, but the worst was going to be… taken care of soon.

Just had to make a few more preparations. Like making sure that the little concoction I had been making was stable.

"What I am going to do from here on is simple, make sure to rebuild this city into something unforgettable."

Rebecca frowns, but doesn't scowl. Progress. "Are you sure that's wise?"

I shrug my shoulders. "Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that it's prime real estate. I already bought most of the land around this area. After all, what businessman would want to keep any land in a city that is by all accounts completely demolished?" I let my smile take on a sharper edge. "Besides, the only one that might have refused isn't around anymore."

She blinks once at me, but she puts the pieces together the moment after. "Did you-"

"Please Becky, even I'm not as blinded by my fury to kill him in the midst of a crisis like Leviathan." Though, I could have. It wouldn't have been that hard. But that rick prick wasn't worth it.

Not when the chance was already there for him to die. It just so happened that his luck was shit.

Or was that Gaia doing her thing? Either way, he was dead, and that's what mattered.

His little crew was still around, but I knew that they weren't going to be a unified threat.

Sides, I would love for them to give me an excuse to hunt them down.

"Regardless, even if you built the entire city back up, it doesn't change the fact that the world is still in a… precarious position." I give her a begrudging nod.

"You're right about that. With Endbringers gone, no more need for the Endbringer truce. And while that means cities won't be going poof every three months...I know that means that certain groups are going to start making moves." My stomach decides that now is the time to announce its hunger.

I didn't need to eat anymore. But, damn if I was going to ever give up food. I loved it too much. Waffles, pancakes, nice slabs of bacon, with maybe a nice cup of coffee on the side.

Yes, I knew what I was having for breakfast.

"Where are you going?" Becky asked as I walked to the doorway, Estrella following behind us, the bird pokemon still firmly in her hands.

"Did you not hear my stomach? I'm hungry. You can have some food if you want." She follows behind me, knowing that there wasn't much that she could do to dissuade me.

Entering the kitchen we found… a surprise. Or rather, two surprises.

Two people were standing on my kitchen floor, laughing at something when they noticed us walk in.

The first one was a black man, tall, buff, very attractive with wonderful hazel eyes that seemed to shimmer in the light. His head was bald, but his strong features and eyes more than made up for it. Next to him, was a leggy blond woman with green almond eyes who was almost as tall as the man's 6ft 4in.

Estrella and I blink owlishly at these two strangers, both of them wearing… fewer clothes than was usually acceptable. They were still keeping their modesty, but she was wearing nothing but a long shirt that went to her thighs, while the man wore a tank top that showed off every single muscle on his arms.

I might have enjoyed the view, if they weren't complete strangers who were just… standing there in my kitchen!

Before I can show any of this to them though, I feel the flash of… adoration in them as they look at me, the smiles forming on their faces as they walk towards me.

I hear Corvisquire chirp once just as they get to me, the leggy blond grabbing onto my hands with both of hers.

"Oh my god, you're Apotheosis!" She squeals with a British accent, and I can't help the uncomfortableness that rises up inside of me. Estrella feels the same as the man gives her a smile, his eyes seeming to shine brighter.

I can hear Becky slowly backing away from us out of view of the two strangers. Get back here you coward!

"Thank you so much for everything! For the Endrbingers, for taking most of us in when we had nowhere to go! For the food! Just… everything!" You know what was the worst part about all of this? I knew that her admiration and attraction were real. There was no hint of malice or deception in her emotions, no negativity that rang around her. Every word that she spoke was true. "It's so wonderful to meet you, my name is Saoirse!"

And it made me want to turn invisible and go hide.

"I didn't know that you had a twin." The man said as he stepped towards Estrella, the sword staring at him with wide eyes like a deer.

He takes one of her hands, kisses it, and gives her a smooth smile. "My name is Noah, might I know yours?"

Estrella, bless her heart, just stands there staring at the man like she didn't know whether to blush or cut him in half. Probably both with her tsundere ass.

Wait, was this the first time that someone has hit on her? I think it was! Gotta make sure to make a painting of this later, cause that expression is hilarious, even if it had the same face as me.

The sounds of footsteps thankfully saves both of us, and Leo stands in the doorway.

Wearing… nothing but a pair of shorts and the rings on his hand.

I sniff the air, and realize what had been that odd scent that had lingered around these two.

I look at both of them, then I look at Leo, and I feel the gears in my head click into place.

Leo, you smooth dog you.

"Ah, Mia, Estrella good morning!" He turns with a smile toward Rebecca and gives a small bow. "Good to see you again signora Rebecca!" The woman merely gives him a stiff nod, obviously trying to hide her face with her hair a bit.

"You've been busay." Estrella says with a grin, only for it to go away when both the man and woman look at her with those smiles on their faces.

He has the nerve to clear his throat at that, smoothing out his long hair.

"I am sure that I have no idea what you are speaking of."

"Oh really?" Was it possible for a voice to purr like that? Noah gave Leo a once over, eyes very much not being subtle about what he was thinking, and gave Leo a very nice smile. Oh my.

"After the night that we had, I would think that you would think more of the both of us Leonardo." Saoirse says with a pout, eyes looking at him with exaggerated sadness.

Leo quickly forgets his embarrassment and takes each of their hands with ease."My dears, what kind of man would I be if I were to forget the passion of last night? The wonders that both of you showed me?"

Oh god, I think I was going to barf.

Sure, I knew that Leo was a… bit of a player, but the man was like the brother I never knew that I wanted. So knowing that he'd… had some fun last night was a bit weird.

Looking over at Estrella, it was obvious she felt the same.

Becky meanwhile had found herself interested in the appliances instead of what we were witnessing.

Huh, wonder when was the last time that she had gotten laid.

You know… considering that she was trying to help in her own weird way, it would serve if she was a bit more… comfortable with herself.

I remember the deal that Moogle had tried to make with Becky over her eye. I snorted. That money-grubbing pom-pom would have swindled her for everything that she had.

But first, breakfast.

While Leo flirted with his… friends, I made do with making breakfast, thankful that they weren't paying any more attention.

Food was delicious of course, and while Becky didn't need to eat, she still did because of the smell. Oh sure, she tried to make it seem like she was only polite, but I noticed the way that her nose twitched and the staring at the plates of piping hot food on the table.

Afterwards, we walked into my bio lab, the computational tree as resplendent as always, the pods that had corpses floating inside of them covered in tarps so I wouldn't have to see them anymore.

Seeing that snake Orochimaru did nothing to me… but Itachi never deserved the fate that was served to him.

And I wept for him enough as it was.

Even his corpse carried the emotions and sorrow that he carried with him in life. Sorrow, despair, self-hatred… and yet, he carried just a pinch of hope.

Hope that was… I don't really know. While I might know how it ended in one life, I wasn't certain if that was how it went down in his world.

But that's not why I was here.

Rebecca was taking everything around her in, marveling at the data tree that contained and processed all the biological data that I had gathered over the past few months. This wasn't even adding in the vast data of all the corpses and samples.

I fucking had Sasuke and Naruto's arms floating in a tank somewhere. While it provided… very interesting data about the two of them, I was just left wondering how the fuck they survived after the explosion they were shoved into.

But that wasn't important right now.

Ugh, I've been so scatterbrained this morning.

"What is this place?"

"My bio lab." I answer honestly, Corvisquire flying out of Estrella's arms to perch himself on his favorite branch on the giant tree in the center, the sword wandering around to a pair of notes that we had been working on a few days ago.

Just a few last-minute scans of Marcus' body to make sure that everything would be compatible after his… new adjustment. He'd volunteered himself when he'd wandered into the lab the other day, and nothing I said would change his mind.

Maybe he would get his head back on straight after this. He'd been… distant ever since the Endbringer battle. I wasn't worried, he was mentally stable, but it was something that I noticed. The isolation and… lostness echoed in his presence.

"Alright… why did you bring me in here?" She stares at me with suspicious eyes, taking a quick glance at the covered tanks, obviously leery about what could be in there.

Probably isn't a good idea to rip off the covers.

That would be… actually kinda funny, but I didn't want to deal with that particular argument right now.

Gesturing at the chair connected to the tree through its roots, I tell her. "Was thinking that you might appreciate it if I could stop that wound in your eye. Along with the cancer in your body."

Her entire spectrum came to a standstill, followed by irritation, confusion, and just a pinch of hot anger.

"Why on earth would you even offer that to me? I thought you hated me." The venom in there would be enough to bring an Elephant's heart to a stop. Or perhaps a Donphan.

I shrug my shoulders. "Because I feel like it. Because I don't want to feel that constant pain that you're in anymore every time that we meet. Or perhaps, it's because just maybe, I don't need to make your life hell just to keep myself happy. I don't really hate you Rebecca, I just hate the decisions that you have made. You've already shown that you're willing to change, your constantly being here even though I annoy the crap out of you is proof of that, and that's enough for me right now."

I don't smile at her, wouldn't feel right for some reason. I was willing to do this, but I still wasn't… completely happy with her. Not with how things had almost gone down in this world.

I just gesture to the chair with an open palm. "The chair will scan your body. After that, I'll be able to get work done. Ah, before I forget, I am going to have to turn off your power while the procedure is underway, otherwise it'll be like trying to shape diamond with straw."

She stares at me, looks back at the chair, then looks back at me. Her face remains a frozen emotionless mask, but I can feel the war going on inside of her. Mistrust, incredulity, disbelief, anger, shame, and on and on the vortex of emotions went. Each one more intense than the one before, sputtering away for whatever came next.

Eventually though, without a single word, the woman frozen in her younger form sits down at the chair, doing her best not to look at me.

"Did Napoleon ask you for this?" I can't help the snigger that comes out of my mouth.

"No, he didn't. He wouldn't try forcing this on you without speaking to you about it. Besides, do you really think that he would have avoided making an entire scene out of it?" Her face blanks again, and I just let out a little laugh. "Alright, won't take much time, just let the scanner do it's work."

Sure enough, within seconds, the data is conveyed into my omnitool, and I hum at the results. Yup, just like I thought. Cancer was still there, just frozen like the rest of her body.

And the eye as well. Hmm… that one was going to be a bit harder. More because the Siberian was something that tore through multiple dimensions.

I could try to repair the flesh around it, but I reckon that it would be like trying to piece together a puzzle with the pieces scattered in the Grand Canyon.

No, surprisingly, it was going to be easier just to cut away the 'infected' tissue and apply new cells. Which would be a paltry compared to needed to figure out how to put everything back together across dimensions.

I mean, I could do it, part of me wanted to, but I knew that there was always the chance that Becky would nope out or something.

Faster I got it done, the faster I could get back to work on… everything else.

Having her be conscious for this, but completely numb to the pain was easy. Without her power activated, she was just a regular woman in a 20 something body. Her emotions were through the roof though, a complete ball of stress and second guesses that I knew she was halfway from changing her mind at any moment.

So, instead, I kept her talking as I… connected to the chair.

It's… surprisingly easy after I figured out how to… communicate with everything. Very much easier when I was… everything that I had become all at once.

I didn't know where I began, and the other me's ended.

I… was more horrified at how little I cared about that.

Looking at Rebecca, the woman that had given up her very soul and consciousness to do what is right, I knew that I was less human than she was.

Which is why I will hold onto these feelings I have. All the good and the bad. The joy, the love, the laughter when times were good and fun.

Same with the sadness and nightmares that haunted me to this day. To the rage that would probably one day be my downfall, along with every ounce of bitterness that had grown. It wasn't perfect, and I was never going to be truly 'good' again.

The blood on my hands from every life that was my own saw to that, and I knew that it would only grow.

But I could try.

And she was trying too, in her own annoying way.

While I exuded energy from the sensors in the chair, slowly working their way through Rebecca's life force, chowing down on the cancer, replacing them with simple proteins that would eventually fade away into her body like nutrients, I decided to keep talking. "Mainly what I want to do with Brockton, is help make sure that the world doesn't collapse in on itself."

She raises an eyebrow, the one over her scarless eye. "Are you hoping to exert your control over the country beginning with this city?"

I was surprised by how little… judgment or admonishment there was inside her voice and emotions.

"That… is a bit of a loaded question. The answer is both yes and no." I twist my fingers in my hand, focus still on the magic and energy that floated inside of her. "I want to bring this world out of the sinkhole that it has become. But I don't want to rule it, or govern it."

She doesn't even bat an eye. "No, you aren't the type to want to rule. I know that. But… what exactly do you mean, 'bring it out'."

"Simple. You and I both know this world wasn't created with long survivability in mind." She opens her mouth to object, but I keep going. "Everything that Contessa did was in an effort to find a 'path' to kill Scion. And while the United States and other countries might remain in power, instead of devolving into parahuman warlords, that is more a bi-product than the actual goal. The world is literally standing on pillars of sand that will one day be worn away by time."

"And even with the Endbringers gone." She said with a whisper.

"It will mean nothing if the vector that built and maintained those pillars is no longer here." I finished just as I started focusing on her eye, one hand gently 'unplugging' the tinkertech eye that had been placed in her empty socket. Damn, it really was still bleeding in there huh?

Instead of becoming angry, or getting that stoic face that she usually wore… Rebecca merely sighed, slumped in her chair, the movement forcing me to adjust my hand so that I wouldn't accidentally cut something out that needed to remain there. "You're right about that. Scion is all that mattered. Consequences be damned."

I simply hum at that. "So, instead of trying to save those crumbling pillars of sand, I'm going to build up my own. But they won't be maintained by me."

"Are you just going to give all your secrets away?" Rebecca asked, and… I could understand why she would think I would go that route.

"No. I'm going to build a school. Along with… plenty of other businesses that are going to help in the long run." I keep the fact that I was going to make the economy my bitch to myself.

"A school for what exactly?"

I give her a smile, a real one, and say. "Everything under the sun and those never seen before."

"You don't want to… rule anything." She said this as if it had only just now clicked in her mind.

I frown at her. "Course I don't want to rule anything! You have any idea how much of a pain it is? You should, senora Directora."

She opens her mouth to protest, the last of the wounded flesh done away with, new pieces already starting to replace what I had taken.

It was a mix of Arc of Embodiment, along with basic application of other magical theories that I had found in the Mystical Mansion. Though, I knew that my nature as a Fairy was helping along with that. Or something else did.

"There's more to it though. More to why you want to help this world than what you're letting on." Her one good eye was staring right at me, the other empty socket haunting, but it wasn't the first one that I had seen in my many lives.

I purse my lips, wondering what was ok to tell her.

Then I remember that I didn't really care.

"Lot of the changes that have been happening in the world are my fault. Those known and unknown." The nerves around the flesh had finished forming, the thin veins quite gruesome to look at as they pulsed with newfound senses. "Pokemon for one. Another being… well these little things." I pull out one of the stones that was pulsing away in my pocket, the orange glowing catalyst of magic resounding with power. "Though, I wasn't the one that made this."

"Yeah, it was the daughter we never knew we were going to have." Estrella muttered from her spot in the room, eyes laughing, but her mouth was in a very thin annoyed line.

"Must you say such things about me?" Gaia says while licking a cone of ice cream. I could smell the sweetness of the chocolate, and the mint wafting off the second scoop of green on top of it.

Rebecca tries to startle, but I simply put a hand on her.

"Becky, I know you've met Gaia before. But you, uh, didn't know that she was at the time."

Rebecca frowns at the young dark-skinned woman, this time wearing a simple teal dress, with simple frills at the elbows and end of the dress. She wore a nice hairpin in the shape of a dove on her hair.

I sniff.

And she stunk of alcohol, but her eyes seemed fine. Whatever, wasn't like she was actually a child.

Gaia stares at Rebecca, the Hispanic woman warily eyeing the consciousness of the world with appraising eyes. "A bit brave to use your cape name without wearing a mask."

Gaia simply laughs at that, like the spring wind brushing through blooming fields. "Oh, Rebecca, I'm not a 'cape'." Even with her smile, I could see the hints of rage in her magma-like eyes. "Of that, I can assure you."

The air seems… tighter for some reason. And if we were outside, I was pretty sure that we would see storm clouds start to gather, or perhaps the earth tremble.

Becky turns to me, the question obvious in her gaze, but I knew that there was… fear in them. Fair. She did watch Gaia absorb an Endbringer core.

"...You said she was your daughter?" Rebecca gave me a side-eye, the unspoken question hanging in the air.

"Not… the way that you think. Remember how some of my powers have a… side effect? Well, Gaia's birth happens to be one of them."

"Life itself is an accident that should be deemed impossible. Yet it happens anyway. Why should it not be the same with me?" She smiles at me again, her blue, green, and white hair blowing without the assistance of wind like fields of grass.

"Look Becky, I did tell you that magic was a thing. And… well… you have met Napoleon. And a few other Heroic Spirits. Is it really that hard to believe that the planet itself has a consciousness? And not like, the Greek or other cultures interpretation of it, but an actual consciousness separate from Humanity."

Rebecca digests that, looks over at Gaia again, looks back at me, and just sighs as I'm putting the finishing touches on her new eye.

"I don't really have any other choice but to believe you do I?"

"You could be stubborn again and refuse. That has been your default attitude since you were a child." Gaia chimed in just as she finished the last of the minty green ice cream and moved onto the bottom chocolate scoop that had the scent of nuts intermingled.

Rebecca didn't look too happy about that. "More of your powers letting you know that?"

Gaia shook her head as she took another lick. "No Becca. I was there, and have been there ever since every living thing on this world took its first breath. From the first dinosaur, until the last sapling dies on my barren rock. Though-" Her molten eyes look at me and she gives me a smile. The most human one that she knew how to wear. "-I believe that will be many years away."

"It's a complicated mess I know." And only gets worse from here on out."Anyways! We can get more in on that later. For now, how about you let me know how I did." I extend a hand and embody a mirror into, it was simple, just a rectangle of reflective glass that I handed to Rebecca.

The woman stared at her reflection, the brown of her newly grown eye blinking back at her, the final nerves finally connecting to the rest of her system.

"Is the anesthetic still working?" I shake my head.

"Nope."

"I see."

She didn't thank me for it. But I didn't want it anyways. To say that the emotions were… complex was an understatement.

I sigh, looking at the rest of the various pods, before looking up at Corvisquire, the bird Pokemon happily napping the day away on his perch.

Estrella, was walking around, eyes surveying the various books, a frown of… boredom on her face as her fingers lightly brushed along the various books and tomes.

Which reminds me, I have to check a few how everyone else is doing after the bender that was last night.

Hmm… doing a little connection to the clone network, I find that Lindsay had gotten into my cabinet again. She's fine thankfully, not the out of control binge that I had found her in that one time.

Judith was breastfeeding baby Claire, Taylor and Krunter with her while they enjoyed breakfast in the Mansion, while most of the Pokemon were just enjoying themselves on the grounds, especially with some of the children who… were now orphans.

Leviathan had been… thorough on his rampage across Brockton.

And not everyone had managed to survive. At least three bunkers were lost, but… it could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.

While I had seen… far worse in my lifetimes, I knew that the others had not. Most of them had seen horror and sorrow before, but nothing on the scale of what Leviathan had brought.

Nor the destruction that I had almost caused when my memories of Kali had manifested themselves.

It always felt like there was just… more to do, but never enough time. Even with all the clones that I could muster.

Infrastructure was at least wonderfully underway. Napoleon had helped on that front surprisingly, with better street structures, defensible positions, making sure that if public transportation ever took off it wouldn't be shit like the rest of America.

Then again, Napoleon had attacked plenty of cities in his time. Guerilla tactics were more his thing, but his insight helped immensely.

The port was actually the easiest to get underway, if only because the Ship Graveyard had served as wonderful scrap metal for some of the materials. Other stuff we had to manufacture back on Mars, but that hadn't been too much of a hassle.

If anything, I had to argue with the Squats so that they wouldn't come.

While they hadn't been banned from the country, the government wasn't exactly happy with having aliens from space just… walking around. They might have started as humans, but they were in a different time, and on a different planet that they had never set foot in.

To say that Congress wasn't happy was like saying that Groudon and Kyogre disliked each other. I wouldn't be surprised if some of that had been influenced by Cauldron being petty. Rebecca hadn't said anything about it, so I doubted it was her. She would have felt at least a little smug if that had been the case.

I had not missed politics at all, in any life. Kali never dealt with them, I avoided them in my first life, and Cybertronian me hadn't liked them either. The less that President Tesla said, the better.

Pushback had been expected, and while I would rather not have to ban the Squats from Earth… it might serve as the only course.

Though, whether or not they would take a grudge because of that would remain to be seen.

I could hope that things wouldn't go that route.

But the fear and… malice that I had felt in that room full of congressmen had been stifling. Even with the few sparks of hope that shined amidst the dark.

I didn't want to go back to some of my… darker routes that I had taken in my tenure as President.

But I might have to.

And I hated it.

Sighing, I shift through the memories again, looking through the hours upon hours of experience in mere seconds, when-

"HIDE ME!" Opportunity charged through the doors, the young Heroic Servant completely covered in mud and dust, a tiny tool belt fastened onto his torso as his bright red eyes looked to me in fear and panic.

I hear Becky float up into the air, face probably scrunched into her 'fighting' face, as she processed the little boy that drove a floating scooter behind me, staring at the doorway with wide fearful eyes.

The damn forge decided that now was the time to connect, a bigger star connects to the constellations in the sky, particularly to a small one that… had been with me for the longest. It felt… like old well-loved paint used to cover a blank canvas with possibility.

And just like that, I knew things. I knew that the 2D world was more than just ink on across a dimension. I knew that, all I needed for it to cross into this one, or to have it synergize and emulate the real world, was a simple application of magic that seemed so simple.

They existed at the same time and did not. It was just a matter of perspective and proper application.

With a thought, I summon a brush with paint already on it, one hand gently patting Opportunity's warm red hair, and paint something simple.

With simple brushes on my hand, painted a blue butterfly. The edges of the wings black with the azure blue seeming to promise so much more than a simple color that I painted on my hand with practiced hands that should not have made sense.

A simple application of magic, mixed with intent and wonder, and I watched with satisfied eyes as the blue butterfly left its dimension into our own.

With slow lazy beats of its wings, it hovered by my hand, its feelers twitching at the reality that it was now a part of.

Slow beats of its wing took it to the doorway, somehow knowing that it was the way out of here, just as the door's opened.

And I realized why Opportunity was running towards me.

I knew who was under that 'mask' of his, but I didn't care. He was my friend. And now, I was staring at two people, one of them I knew by her presence, the other… was someone foreign to me.

Of course, that's when the memories from my clones fully processed and I remembered the star that had connected during my binge.

Well, shit.

Estrella

I knew that shit was going to find us at some point, but I didn't think that it was going to be this soon.

How the fuck did they get in here in the first place?

I feel the wind tickle my ears, and turn to find Gaia munching on her waffle cone, serious eyes staring back at me.

She let them in then huh.

Think I could figure out why.

Better to have them come in the front door with us knowing, instead of having them… try to get our attention.

Still, wasn't expecting the Goddess of Lover or the King of Asgard to walk in. Much less together, though the one eyed man looked annoyed as Aphrodite walked in prim and proper.

And of course, she was drop-dead gorgeous.

Every second that passed she looked more and more like the various crushes that I'd had over the years. One second she would look like Gal Gadot, the next she would look like the cute barista that I would see at Starbucks.

Damn Mia for giving me her fucking taste in women.

I WAS A SWORD DAMN IT!

Her hair was thick and wavy, ending in impossible curls at the end, each strand glossy and ethereal. She wore no makeup, nothing at all that would enhance or embellish her ever-changing features. Any makeup that she wore would simply mar the face that gra-fuck that no!- gave us a smile.

She wore a dress that hid plenty, but enticed with what was shown, it was mostly black, with hints of purple accents like those of roses along the shoulders and down to the elbows. Brown eyes greeted us, as her smile remained.

The blue butterfly flew past the two gods, uncaring for either presence.

Aphrodite didn't care, but the Aesir god did.

He was… not what I was expecting.

Instead of Anthony Hopkins, or Ian MacShane I was staring at… someone very different.

He was thin for one. Almost like a rake, and young, couldn't be older than any one of us. Dark hair accompanied strong if boyish features, the bare beginning of a stubble on his chin and over his lip. In his hand, he held a walking cane, the polished but simple piece of wood clacking with every step, the man seeming to actually use it for support.

It was a lie though. I could tell from the rest of his body language, though he was pretty good.

One eye was a glassy blue, a fake, while the other was a startling green that eyed us up and down the way that someone would a wild beast.

Becky was a beacon of confusion and worry. Guess seeing us worried was enough to tell her that whoever they were, they weren't exactly friends.

But that would have to be seen.

"Mia darling! Just look at you!" Aphrodite declared with open arms, walking towards us like we were old friends. "Oh, I wish that my children will someday look like you do!"

"Oh dear god." Mia and I whispered together.

She laughs and places a hand to her mouth, suddenly looking positively dainty. "Well… I am the goddess of love!"

"Feh, all of you love gods are the same. Focused more on getting your rocks off inste-" his words were cut off as Aphrodite batted her hand at him, waves of pink slapping his face to one side.

"I'm sorry girls, I thought that I heard a rube passing gas." Odin glares at her, his one good eye glowing golden, the cane at his hand shifting into a crackling spear, the end a three prong sharpened piece of metal, the electricity crackling between each blade.

"You-"

"No fighting in my lab." Mia intoned, voice calm, but… they could feel the Wrath coming off her in waves, Becky actually tensing as the only other time she felt this was right after Gaia ate the Endbringers.

And… Odin returned to his slouched posture, cane in hand, though clearly more annoyed than before.

Aphrodite looked nonplussed, and took Mia's hand.

I had to restrain myself so I wouldn't slice it off.

Mia had far more patience than me and let her take it. "Now, my dear, when are you finally going to find yourself someone! You have your pick of anyone that you could want I assure you! People would line themselves up for a chance!" Then she turned to look at me square in the eyes, her own glittering like a cat that had just caught a fish. "And don't think I forgot about you~!"

I suddenly wanted to turn back into a sword and shove myself in an umbrella stand.

"I'm… perfectly" happy with my love life thank you." Mia said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, I am sure that you and I both know that's a lie!" It… wasn't malicious? More like she was trying to tease us.

Didn't change that everything in my being wanted to deny this shit just as much as Mia did.

Then she turned to look at Rebecca, and she got that gleam in her-

Oh no.

"For example! Rebecca darling! How about you give that wonderful man Napoleon a chance! The man is head over heels for you! Honestly, I'm quite jealous."

Rebecca stares at her like she just asked her to wear a quinceanera dress as Alexandria and fly through the city in it.

"Oh, where are my manners- my name is Aphrodite! And I must say, that you have kept yourself pent-up for far too long! Though my heart does weep for you! Losing the man that you love in front of you! And then losing an eye to his murderer!? Oh, it is just so tragic, it makes me want to cry!" Even though she was being completely honest, part of me wanted to slug her in the face, the fact she was reminding me of every crush I ever had be damned.

The hurt and pain that resonated from Rebecca didn't help.

"But that is in the past, and you must really move on my dear! Mortals, and even gods are not meant to be alone without love." And suddenly, the exaggerated drama queen was gone, and she held a… motherly look in her eyes as she gazed at Rebecca. "Love hurts when it is lost, but it can always be found again. Even if it might not be in the same shape that you might have guessed."

Then like a switch, drama bitch was back and her eyes shined. "Besides! If Napoleon doesn't work out, well… you both need some help in the romance department!"

Oh dear god.

"SO!" Mia yells, obviously not liking where this was going as much as I was, while Rebecca looked relieved at the sound of our voice for once. "Why are you here in the first place?"

She was asking both of the gods this, though, it was mostly directed at Odin. Neither of us cared why Aphrodite was here, we just wanted her gone at this point.

"I'm here because I would like to speak… business. Alone." Odin said in a firm quiet voice, one hand twitching on his cane every couple of seconds while stealing glances at Rebecca and Aphrodite.

Mia turns an expectant gaze at Aphrodite, one that I mirrored alongside her.

"Oh, you are both so precious!" Aphrodite said while gazing at the both of us like we were puppies or some shit. I was a weapon of soul-bending power dammit? She does sigh after a few seconds of blank and angry stares. "Fine, fine! I came here because I thought that I sensed… a hunk around here."

"You're going to have to be more specific about that." Mia said with annoyance, Opportunity now long gone, having snuck out while we were all arguing with each other.

The Greek goddess of love gave her a knowing smile, nose twitching. "Ah, you know exactly who I'm talking about! I know technically I'm married to your father," Oh god, like our real family wasn't already a pain in the ass. "-but what can I say? Love and war just have… a connection." She says the last word with a purr, one that made shivers go down my spine in a way that I didn't like.

I didn't blame Opportunity from running as far as he could.

"Ah, but it is clear that my hubby is no longer here. Pity. Now!" She sweeps Mia and I into a hug, I try to punch her, but Mia grabs my hand-damn killjoy- and allows the hug to finish in peace. "I will be keeping an eye on your exploits dear Mia! I am going to love watching what you do!"

With grace and a sway of her hips that I did not stare at, she leaves the workshop, calling out to the hallway, "OH MARSY! WHERE ARE YOU SWEETIE!"

I felt a shiver of fear from my connection to Mia. Guess the poor Spirit was still here somewhere.

"What the hell was that?" Rebecca asked, finally pushing past the awkwardness to speak.

"Another side effect." Ugh, this was such a pain in the ass. I was going to shove that hammer up that Giant's ass. I know this is his fault somehow!

"Ahem." The thin handsome man coughs into his hand, slouching in his posture, staring at us with his real and glass eye. "If we could?"

Mia and I both sigh. "Rebecca, you should be good to go. Here." Mia tosses a watch over to Rebecca, nothing truly high tech, simply a watch, with one addition. "Using that you should be able to turn off your power whenever you want to."

The Head Director frowns at the device in her hand. "Why on Earth would I want to do that?"

"Before you were stuck in your power state because you had no other choice. Your body was dying, and the power was automatic. But no one should have the chance of normalcy taken away from them. Not if they still have a chance at it." Mia shrugs.

"Bah, throw it away if you want to. No skin off our nose." I chime in, wanting to get this along the way, wanting to get this talk over with as soon as possible.

She leaves, with the watch still safely in her hand. I hear the 'click' of something opening and closing as she makes her way through the many hallways that made up our Workshop.

Which just left one person here.

Odin stares at both of us, rubbing one of his knees with his left hand. "If you wouldn't mind, I would like to sit and have some tea like a civilized person."

"Funny coming from a Norse god." I snort.

"Ah how cute, the sword thinks that she has a brain!"

"YOU KNOW WHAT-"

The green plains were a… change from the desert sands. As were all the men and people that barely reached my elbows. How in the world did they grow to be so small? It was baffling.

And I wasn't even one of the tall ones back in town.

Though, the monster attacks were the one constant here. Every blood-red moon, they would return. Bokoblins Moblins, and those one-eyed bat things. We would repel them, but every injury for us was another that might not be able to fight in the next month.

Or whenever the bigger bands of monsters or bandits decided that it would be fun to attack another population of people to sack.

–

Ganon has been becoming bigger and bigger every time that he tries to escape the castle. And the light that drives it back inside only seems to become dimmer every time. Like the light of a dying star being taken by a scourge of darkness.

Yet… no one does anything. Content to merely stay in their little communities, unable to care or hope for anything better. It's been all that most of them know, just like I do.

I… cannot find myself content with this. Huddling and gathering equipment every month whenever the blood moon rises again. Hoping beyond hope that the monster trapped in the castle will never manage to break free.

Like a lizard huddling underneath the sands, waiting for the hawk to fly away.

Only it knew that it was simply one bad luck away from dying alone.

Mia

I managed to get Estrella not to stab Odin in the chest, while the thin man merely gave us a smirk from his perch on his cane. Fucking lightning asshole.

I had Napoleon and Bedivere distracting Quetzalcoatl, while Edison and Tesla were working on some projects.

Leo was… somewhere with his friends.

I wasn't going to go near with that.

Which left Estrella and I sitting with Odin in our Pokemon Lab, handing him a cup of steaming hot coffee which he took a sip of before grimacing.

"Not good enough for you?" I ask the question with a cold empty smile and dead eyes. If he insulted my coffee I was going to use that cane as a stick and beat him like a piñata.

"It's delicious. I hate it."

"You're an asshole." Estrella says while giving him the stink eye, her own white mug of coffee between her hands.

"As if my wife hasn't told me that every moment since we woke up." Odin responded dryly while taking another sip, rolling his eyes while tapping his cane on the floor with one hand.

Honestly, her annoyance was something that I wasn't entirely feeling from her alone.

Hmm, coffee.

"What do you want Odin, and why was it so important that you had to bother me during my party high?"

He snorts at that. "Yes, what a pity that I interrupted you peacocking around on the internet building the statue of liberty."

I did wha-

Fuck, I did. Just remembered that my clones had found the… giant magical statue forged from Beskar, and who knows what else. My supplies of conceptual crystals were relatively empty, more so than I had ever used before for something other than the Sky Rose.

And I couldn't remember what I built the damn thing for. Not its intention, or whatever the hell process I had used. And the only thing that I could do to figure it out was to break it down and reverse engineer it from there.

Only problem was that it was already all over the internet, threads upon threads of conversations talking about it, along with plenty of emails sent to me from complete strangers, along with plenty of people in politics. Whether it be those in the PRT, or certain rising stars in congress or other bullshit that I wanted nothing to do with.

Researching it without breaking it down was possible, it was just going to take longer.

But that was going to have to wait for later.

After I made it back home from my trip. However long it was going to take.

"I believe that it would behoove you to focus on the present instead of whatever inane plans you have." I don't bother hiding the glare I give him, to which he responded with an empty stare.

"Must you be so insufferable?" I ask him.

The corners of his lips twitch up, but I wouldn't quite call it a smile. "Yes."

Figured that the king of Asgard was a pain in the ass.

However, that was supposed to work.

"I am here because I believe that it is always prudent to meet those that are your betters. Especially the one that seems to hold the most power in the room. You know, whenever our… progenitor isn't around." Odin says while looking towards the door, Gaia having blipped away whenever we had left the biolab.

"So you're here to kiss our ass?" Estrella asked. I would have palmed my face, but I knew Odin wouldn't mind.

He was an asshole, but what was the point in trying to lie to someone, or butter someone up that could see right through you? Cause of that eye of his that he had sacrificed himself for.

Or however it went in this world. Whatever cause all of these gods to just appear in the world.

"Basically." He took another sip of his coffee, giving an appreciative hum. "Damn good coffee."

"Thanks. You thought that being blunt like that me would convince me?"

"Would you have truly preferred it if I came in here trying to play mind games?" No, I very much wouldn't have. "Then there you go."

"You know, now I know why people hate it when I do that."

"Yes, I'm finding myself in the unfortunate circumstance of empathizing." The annoyance mixed with the sincerity was fucking palpable.

"I'm assuming that since you are here… that means that the gods of other cultures are going to pop up?"

"I have no idea." Odin said, the honesty mixing in with deep-seated rage. Oh, he hated that. "Whatever this is, it's completely thrown the table out the window. I don't know how things are going to go from here. I don't even know how I can exist. All those answers lie with you, and that… Forge of yours."

"You can see it?" Estrella asked, eyes shining bright.

"Fucking hurts to look at it for too long. Damn near overloads my entire being. But I know it's there. And I know that whatever it is, it's a pain in my ass. Probably a pain in the ass for the world too."

"Please do not speak for me." Gaia said as she appeared once again, giving the Norse god of war an even stare.

He pursed his lips and looked away. "Duly noted."

Then she disappeared again, not even the wind rustling at her departure.

I curl my lips in thought. I… couldn't change anything about the effects that were going on in the world. Anything that I currently had I could change, but it was the connection of the different stars that caused the effect. Connections that I couldn't resist or make on my own.

Did that Giant asshole determine how many connections I gained?

Or was this something that even he couldn't control?

Ugh, I rub the front of my face, not bothering to hide my irritation or displeasure. The God of War in front of me could probably already see it with that eye of his, the one that could see the secrets of the world in exchange for his own sacrifice to himself.

"Yeah, same." Was the only thing that the thin god said, cane hitting the side of the table with quite irritated taps that made a rhythm to a song that I didn't know.

"Don't sympathize with this prick please, god knows that we could do better."

"As if a sword could have any right to speak of doing better than a god of war." Odin responded with a sneer. And yet… I could tell that the words weren't filled with malice. If anything, there was amusement tinged annoyance in them.

"I know better to trust the dumbass that thought he was playing chess, when he was really playing checkers and completely fucked the board up." Now that caused his nostrils and mouth to twitch in anger.

The room continues on in quiet for a few seconds, when the tapping of feet and giggle of childhood glee that stirred something inside of me.

Didi and Judith walked in, the blond woman holding baby Claire in her arms, the small furry Experiment Quetz happily playing with the babe while he flew beside them.

Both the baby and the Experiment were growing up healthy and strong, though I was more in the dark on how Quetz was progressing. I might have created him, but there was a certain… mystery to anything that I made.

That was the problem when my magical affinity was more of a… feeling instead of an exact science.

It was probably the caveat of being… whatever it is that I was.

Though, I was thankful that the more I researched, the more that I delved into the library inside of the Mystic Mansion, and the various other tomes of magic that I had, the less that was becoming an issue.

President Mia's memories on Magecraft was another boon in that, though it was far more… limited than my more… Arcane capabilities.

Baby Claire giggled and stared at the Norse God sitting across from me, the dark haired being having paled by several shades, eyes wide instead of half asleep, while his grip on his cane became bone white as he stared at the goth woman in front o him. The baby laughed and reached out towards the man, sparks of blue light springing from her fingers, Judith booping her daughter with a light smile.

"Now, now Claire, no magic, least not until you can actually speak a sentence and read." The dark skinned child spluttered and giggled, burrowing deeper into her mothers embrace, the fuzzy snake/dragon doing the same.

Something in me ached at that, even while the smile on my face brightened at the sight.

Wonder if that was mainly 'me' or if it was from 'all' of me. Hard to tell nowadays what was influenced from who.

The dreams and fragments of memories wasn't making any of this better. Sigh

"Hello Woden." Didi said to the Norse god, causing his right hand to twitch, the cane becoming a spear for all of a second.

"I… did not know that you were here." He said carefully, eye glancing to the doorway, probably wondering if he could make a break for it and outrun her.

"You and I both know that if it was your time, there's nothing that you can do about it." Estrella said with sadistic glee, eyes shining with childish amusement.

Didi merely gives the sword a disapproving stare, the smile still on her lips. Estrella merely shrugs, rolls her eyes, and relaxes back in her seat.

"So, who're you?" Judith asked with a single raised eyebrow, the single mother sizing up the Norse god with stoic eyes.

"Odin" he said while slowly looking away from Death, though he made sure to keep her visible from the corner of his eye.

"Cape?" His face scrunched up in distaste.

"No."

"Alright." Was her only response, ignoring the deity and sitting down next to me. "About time that you woke up. You were out for quite a few hours."

"Yeah… sorry about that." I say while rubbing the back of my head in embarrassment. I hadn't gone on a drunken binge like that in… it had been a while.

"Don't be. You've been so pent-up and it was about time that you just cut loose. Though, that last thing you made was quite a… surprise. Didn't expect to see that again."

"Yeah… I didn't plan on doing that."

"While I am sure that this is very… touching, we still have business to discuss." Odin said abruptly with a stern voice, lips twitched downward in a frown.

"What's there more to talk about? You basically said that you're here to kiss our ass cause you know you can't do shit." Estrella said with all the diplomacy of a brick to the face. Judith laughs while I rub the side of my head in irritation.

Odin sneers at her, flinching a little when Didi let's out an amused giggle.

"I think that you should all relax a little bit. After all, is there really any reason why it all has to get hashed out now?" The pretty goth woman asked, the silver ankh around her neck shining with silver light.

Odin snaps his mouth shut, and stands up, cane smacking the floor with a THWACK.

"Very well. I am sure that we're going to have… much to talk about later." And with that, he turns around and disappears out the door, his presence disappearing.

"Is it a good idea to have him just walk out the door alone?" Judith asks while Claire grabs onto my finger, chubby fingers grabbing on with all her might as she giggled and burbled.

"He's not going to do anything. Least, not anything that would get him into deep shit with us." Estrella says while smiling at the baby with… a sad smile on her face.

"Hmm, right, if you say so." Judith said, not fully convinced. "Could you get me a mug? Kinda got my hands full."

"Sure. You Didi?"

"Yes please." Didi said with a quiet smile.

I get up, and move over to the counter in the small kitchen, fixing up two more cups of coffee, a regular black for Judith, while I made a Latte for Didi.

"How does it feel?" I asked Marcus, the young man opening and closing his hand, staring at it as if waiting for his skin to jump out at him.

Given what I had just given him, I could understand the feeling.

"... Weird. Like I got a… new set of limbs hiding just beneath the skin." The wiry young man stretches his hand again, placing his ring back on his finger, a small flickering humming flame coming to life before dimming away. "Why me though?"

"Cause you're the one that needs the boost most right now." Blunt, but it was a truth that he and I both knew.

Instead of getting angry, he gives an ugly self-deprecating laugh. "You're not wrong about that. Isn't like I got the knack for fighting that the rest of them seem to have."

"You don't, but that's not exactly a bad thing. It's just that your skills aren't… really in that route."

Sky Flames also tended to be very late bloomers. At least, if they weren't properly cultivated.

"Yeah, I kinda knew that." He looked back at me, his skin shifting for a split second, pure white and black rippling around him before his image settled back. "People are… easier to read now."

"And that's just another aspect of the flame. Harmony flames are exactly what it says. You're harmonizing with other people, feeling their emotions and mental state, letting you get a better read over people." I summon my own flame from my ring, the outer edges tinged with the sparkling yellow of the sun. "And I think that's where your talents are going to lie for a little bit. But honestly, you're not a bad fighter. Not at all." If anything, I would say on his own, with his flames and own fighting prowess, he would be a good high tier cape on his own.

I know for a fact that he could have beaten Hookwolf that night, but it wouldn't have been settled away as quickly as Taylor had. And definitely not without a scratch.

But that's why I gave him this new little upgrade to give him an edge. Plus… the mad scientist side of me wanted to see just where he would take those new abilities.

I wasn't able to completely reduce it to it's base state, so it still retained some of the original's capability.

I doubted that was a bad thing though.

"So you're saying that I'm made to socialize with people instead of being on the front line?" He asked seriously, staring at the humming ember that ignited on his ring.

"I'm saying that people are where you excel. Harmony's are the sky that accept everyone around them. But that doesn't have to be everything of who you are. Just a part."

"And who am I?" He asked me, blue eyes searching, pleading for something.

How funny that he and Johnny would have the same conundrum.

But then again, how many people truly knew who they were?

How much did I know of who I was? It felt like it was subject to change any time a new star came through.

"I know that you're an angry young man. I know that the entire reason that you joined up was because you hated the Empire." I could hear and feel the thrumming as his heart kicked up the beat. "Yes I knew."

"If you knew, then why did you let me go out and fight them?" He wasn't angry, not really. But it was a bare thing.

Fear was always on the precipice of turning to rage.

I knew that better than most people.

"Did I ever send you there alone?" I asked him rhetorical, and watched as he put the pieces together.

"You knew that Taylor would stop me that night. And every night after that." He said with a whisper.

"Yeah. I did. I knew that Taylor wanted nothing more than to be a real hero. Therefore, I knew that she would stop you from killing any Empire cape that you managed to capture."

"That's… manipulative of you." I frown, but it isn't really at him.

"Yeah. It's… not something that I really like, but… you tend to pick up some things when you've been a politician in a past life."

"Sounds like hell."

"It was…" Some of the emotion must have come through my voice, because he looks at me sad eyes, his blue orbs widening as if surprised at the fact. Right.

He hadn't seen any of my breakdowns like the rest of the group had. Same went with Johnny.

They'd only ever known me after the memories came through. That… hurt for some reason.

"Then… that's not what I want to do either." He said simply staring at the flame in his hand, eyes conflicted.

"Then simply don't." I tell him. "Just because you're able to understand the emotions of other, harmonize with them, does not mean that you have to be a master schemer. It just… means that you're better at being able to read the people closest to you. That's neither good nor bad, that just depends on how you take it."

He looks up from the flame and stares out the mansion window, eyes watching as yet another ship arrived at the Harbor from Mars, Squats, Humans, and Pokemon all working to unload the cargo and preparing to move it out to wherever it was needed.

"Johnny's scared a lot more often than he lets on." Marcus starts, voice distant like he was speaking from a dream. "He doesn't show it, but he gets nightmares sometimes. From the Endbringers I think. It's just… he survived for so long in the ABB by getting in fights that could get him killed, so I thought that maybe dying wasn't something that bothered him anymore. And that's just what I'm feeling from Johnny."

"It doesn't even scratch the surface of what everyone else is feeling right?" He nods.

"Whatever… intuition I have, it only really, uh, 'kicks in' I guess the longer that I hang around people. Taylor is… she's strong. Almost fearless. Especially when we're out in the field. But wherever things are calm, and she's just hanging out, it feels like-"

"Like she's a second away from having a breakdown sometimes." I finish his sentence.

He nods. "It happens a lot less compared to when I first joined, even then it only happened every now and then before going away. But every now and then it tends to pop up."

I purse my lips, wondering for a few seconds if I should even try to explain why that was.

Though, I didn't need to bother.

"She triggered with her own power, didn't she? What she has isn't magic or something that you gave her. She's a real parahuman." My silence answered his question.

"I… saw a trigger a couple years back. Not here. Watched a neo-nazi group, not the ABB, chase down some mixed kids down the road when I was coming back from my job. I was barely out of school at the time." A scowl marred his face, old bitter anger that mixed with even older rage bubbling to the surface. "Damn animals laughed the whole time. Just cause the worst of them are here in Brockton didn't mean that there weren't any outside of this city." Not a surprise. Plenty of White Supremacist racists back home too.

"They fucking didn't even have the decency to kill them cleanly. Aimed for their legs before they started… torturing them the whole time. The last one was a girl, didn't look older than 15. And then… she triggered and I passed out. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in the hospital from a concussion and she was being hunted down by the PRT cause she was deemed to be a danger to everyone around her." With every word his flame grew hotter, louder, and pure, the flame of the Sky responding to his rage.

His breaths come out hot and heavy, the Flame flaring with each one before he eventually gets a hold of himself.

"Whatever happened to her?" I finally ask, staring at him with sad eyes while he remained looking out the window as the work remained underway.

"They caught her eventually, but… well, by that point let's just say that it was a bit too late. At least, as far as they were concerned. And I just… stood there and didn't do a damn thing."

"What could you have done? You were just one man watching a lynching happen with no weapon."

"I could have done something." He hissed out, though his flame remained the same size. "But no. I did nothing and just watched."

I hum at that. "And that's part of the reason why you stepped into help Johnny wasn't it? You couldn't stand to just be another bystander as another tragedy happened in front of you."

"It wasn't that noble. I just… didn't want another reason to hate myself."

"That's alright too. You did the right thing, you know that. And while you weren't on the front lines against Leviathan, you still made sure that Noelle would remain calm."

"You didn't need me to make sure that she didn't go monster on all of us."

"No, but you did something better than that. You made her feel like a normal person again instead of what her power did to her." He shrugs his shoulders. He didn't believe that, I could feel it.

"Whatever. Doesn't mean that I wasn't a coward in that moment. And with Kaiser dead, and the rest of the Empire gone underground, I doubt that I'm going to have a chance to give those white supremacist pricks a beating." While the rage was still there, it was more of a simmer than a roaring inferno. Like the anger had gone on for too long.

A good thing that.

"No. But there is at least one good thing that you can still do." And while I hated just… sending him out to do this, it had to be done. But I couldn't do it. Part of me wanted to, oh dear god did I want to, but there was just so much to fucking do.

And I had to make sure that he had the training and adversity that he needed to become something more than an angry young man.

I wouldn't be here forever. I had no interest in having any power in this world longer than I had to. Honestly, part of me wanted nothing more than to go somewhere that no one knew me and open up a little shop.

Yeah, just selling whatever came to mind sounded like fun. Maybe a cafe, a bar, or just a little 'pawn shop'. That sounded nice.

Even if I had a feeling that it probably would never happen.

But I had to ready him for whatever might come in the future.

Already the gods were coming back, and while so far they had been… amenable, there were still evil gods out there. Forming, gathering their strength. And if there was something that gods always desired, it was for people to worship them.

It had been that way in the days of old, in so many other worlds, and it would be the same here.

Well, I wasn't going to have that. I didn't kill those Endbringers and start work on a city to develop the world to just have humanity become puppets on a string for gods. No, they would soar higher than that.

He had the makings of a leader, even if it was barely a bare glimmer compared to what he could be one day. Taylor was on her way onto being a force of nature, while Lindsay had sharpened her mind beyond her specialty.

It felt… wrong to start thinking of them this way.

But it was the only way to make sure that this world would be alright without me in it.

Because I knew that if I stayed here… the changes would never stop. And there was so much more in the Forge that could only prove to be disastrous.

I shiver at the memory of the Demon, the choking darkness and feeling of… nothingness creeping back into my mind before I shove it back into the box where I locked it away.

"What is it?" He asked me, his face becoming stone when he noticed the expression on my face.

"I need you to go with Henrick to… kill someone."

He frowns again at that. "I thought that you wanted us to be 'heroes'."

"I want you all to keep the good in you. And while you lose something in killing… I have the feeling that you've already done it before." He doesn't answer that. He won't even look in me in the eye, preferring to look away. "The ones that I'm sending you against are… they need to die. No question about it."

"Why won't you do it?" He asked, more curious than actually frustrated.

"Because I don't think I would leave it with a clean death." I answered honestly. No, I had a feeling just being near them would… bring Kali back out again. Bring the worst part of me out that would indulge in the darkest places that my thoughts went.

This was selfish, it was cowardly, but they needed to be gone. And Marcus needed the experience.

It was a parasitic malady that would never leave my mind, taunting me, reminding that for as much as I wanted to just forget my past… I couldn't. Both my past as Kali, the Warrior demigod general that would sacrifice millions in our effort to fight off Gaia's efforts to kill us off, and that of President Tesla, the bomb staining my hands with the blood of millions.

"Alright." He answered. "Who is it?"

"In all honesty, only two of them need to die, even if they're all monsters in their own right… barring perhaps one of them. The rest… well, Henrick can incapacitate them, though I have a feeling that one of them is going to make it impossible to take away living." Without another word, I press a button on my Omnitool, allowing the hard light holograms to come to life, showing the images of his nine targets.

"Well, that explains a lot." He said simply, the fire back in his eyes as his flame sprung once more to life.

And I could feel his new addition start to shift and form around his body.

"Agumon, please look at me." I pleaded with the orange dino, who still remained staring at the wall in defiance.

"No."

"Agumon.." He hadn't even spoken to me since the end of the battle. I had tried to get him to talk to me before, but… I had just been so busy. And relegating this to a clone felt… wrong.

Either I was going to be there in the flesh, or I wasn't going to be there at all.

"What's the point in me being your partner if you won't even let me fight with you?" He finally asked, head remaining looking at the wall instead of her.

"You would have died." I answered simply and honestly.

"And what if you had? What if you had died out there and I was just… stuck here? Helpless, while you were out there risking your life for everyone here!"

I sigh. And while I knew he had a point, I still wasn't going to apologize for what I did. I know that was stubborn, and perhaps a little unfair, but he knew that I was right.

He would have died like so many others, and I didn't know if he would have been reverted to an egg or simply… becoming nothing but data and returned to wherever it was that he came from.

"I know you're mad, but you're going to have to talk to me at some point." I say gently. "Otherwise, this is how it's going to stay." He doesn't say a word and won't look her in the eye, head still facing the wall with a stubbornness that reminded me of…well, me.

I let out a sigh, knowing that he wasn't going to be changing his mind.

So, I get up, and right before I leave, I stretch out my hand, trying to go to pat his head, before I stop and leave my hand at my side.

Right now he needed space, and me smothering him wasn't going to help at all.

"Give him time. He'll come around." Ahsoka told me as we walked through the rebuilt streets, the experiment of fast drying concrete having been a success. Still was a little more brittle compared to regular concrete, hadn't quite gotten the mix quite right, but I wasn't an expert in this sorta thing.

Experimenting with building materials at least.

Mundane materials. While the buildings of the city would probably someday become towering sights of technology, it was going to be a city for the people first. And right now, they mostly cared about having their own homes and the infrastructure that served as its foundation instead of fancy gadgets and state-of-the-art technology.

"I hope so."

"While he might be a Digimon, he's still a child. One that was created to be your partner, and he feels betrayed. I can understand that." Her eyes go glassy as she stares off into the distance, probably remembering something from her days in the Clones Wars. "though, you should have talked to him before everything started instead of throwing yourself into work."

I winced at that. She was right of course.

Everything had just happened so fast, and I couldn't… didn't think of everything in that moment.

I just acted, not letting the usually quiet voices in my head speak to the side that knew how to listen.

Course, how many other times I do something stupid or forget the people around me because I had something that needed to be done? Only made me look forward to the day when everything is built and I can just… finally relax.

Funny that. Technically, I'm just doing the same thing that I always did in my previous lives.

"How are you acclimating to… well everything here?" I ask as we walk through even more construction being done, underground tunnels being barreled through by overeager squats while the engineering students and practitioners watched and took notes.

I had made a call to any and all those that could help out in the construction, and given the promise of food and pay from my pockets, people had flocked straight towards my door.

The shelter that they were helping build was merely the cherry on top. The volunteers were mostly extra hands, most of them too busy writing down eager notes of a giant drill strapped to a tank digging through the earth, while the Squats went about properly reinforcing the tunnels that would serve their eventual purpose.

It wasn't just limited to humans though, just as many Pokemon, both big and small were scattered here and there, the creatures more than happy to offer up their services.

"Why are they digging out those tunnels? I don't remember there being any in the city before the attack." Ahsoka asked while watching the work underway, a team of flying Pokemon helping to lift beams of steel and iron for better placement while the Squats were underway with digging the hole's they were going to be stabbed into.

"Because I thought that it would be more interesting that way." She turns and… stares at me with a profound look of disbelief on her face, mixed with a bit of hope that I was joking.

I was not.

"Is… that really the reason?"

"Well… yes and no." I look out across the rebuilding city, most of the rubble having been taken and reconstituted for materials after a quick trip to Mars and my fabricating factories on it's moon Phobos.

Less of a chance of polluting the planet if the moon itself was turned into a living breathing manufactory.

Something that I was hoping to do soon with Earth's own moon.

"It's more of planning for the future." She raises an… eyebrow? She didn't really have hair there, but the white markings might as well be the same.

"Oh?"

"Eventually, space is going to become far more scarce than is available now. And since I don't want the planet to become a barren wasteland devoid of green… well, that means that the only places that we have to left to expand to are up and down."

"Then why not focus on space exploration? I'm sure that there are plenty of planets nearby. Or at least, you should be able to find a few." Ahsoka explained.

I give her a smile and shake my head.

"It isn't that simple here Ahsoka. Space exploration was nothing more than a dead dream on this world. That winged bitch made sure that we were nothing more than hamsters stuck inside of a cage. And the efforts of that have… dwindled over the years." NASA being a mere hollow shell of what it had once been upset me to my stomach. Why spend money on that when you never knew if a city was going to still be around in three months? Or if some new parahuman triggers and decides to finally lose their mind and go on a killing spree?

Just because I knew why the exploration of the stars was forgotten didn't make it hurt any less. An aching wound that hurt more than the pain I felt from others every day.

"Hmm. yes, I suppose that I can understand that. I'm sorry, I have a hard time remembering that hyperdrives are…not as common as they are in my galaxy." I can feel the hurt and melancholy sweep across her, like a wave of air, before the normal calm resumes inside of her.

It wasn't repression, more of a… centering of oneself.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous of that.

"I do appreciate how you have helped with what you can though. You and the rest of the soldiers."

I ignore the connection to another star in the forge, a smaller one that merely adds information and experience into my mind in the vein of biology. There wasn't really much that it gave me that I didn't already have, though there was some experience with mutated physiology.

"It's the least that I can do for this world. It's suffered enough." she hadn't been… happy when she had scrolled through the internet and read about the Endbringers. I can't think of anyone that would be.

I remember the twinge of hurt that had resonated within her, humming to myself. "We never talked about what you want to do after… well, after I have managed to find a way to get this place somehow functioning." Ahsoka laughs at that.

"I think that you had plenty keeping you occupied." Yeah, wasn't that the truth.

"Still… what do you want?"

We keep walking on through the city, projects and digging reverberating across the renewed city, every second a new task being finished.

"I… you said that there was more that you knew about the situation back home. Something that I… think I'm ready to hear about." I purse my lips in thought, that rock in my stomach becoming just a little bit heavier.

"That's… going to be a difficult conversation."

"I thought that it would be. Otherwise, you would have said something." That, and no doubt you could feel my own trepidation through the Force couldn't you.

"I will tell you right now that… I believe that there isn't going to be much that we would be able to do. At least, not without a lot of bloodshed."

"... I think that we both knew that was the case." Ahsoka said neutrally, the turmoil in her no doubt coming from her memories of the war.

She was just a kid when she became a soldier.

Barely thirteen if I remember right. And now, she was barely reaching her 18th year of life.

There was a lot of dead kids now. Probably more with every passing day.

The Jedi were gone, scattered to the wind, while the Empire remained strong.

Should we ever go back… it was going to get ugly, with us fighting against a force that controlled the galaxy.

That was something that I had no experience in.

What was a war on a single planet compared to the tactical logistics that would span across an entire galaxy? Across countless planets and worlds, an untold number of living breathing people scattered across each one? Many holding secrets that might be better left forgotten.

Even with what I knew, I wasn't looking forward to ever having to go back there.

Though, it wasn't as much of a mountain as it had been when I first visited.

Before that though… there was still so much to do.

"Ah, responsibility. A want and duty that I have never envied or enjoyed." A low smooth voice says as we pass by a park bench.

Sitting there, completely relaxed without a care in the world, looked to be a young black man, his hair completely shaved at the scalp, a small fashionable goatee clipped neatly and evenly that did well to frame his handsome face.

He wasn't very tall, or even very broad, but I wouldn't say that he was small.

Simple slacks adorned with lines of sliver, like veins pulsing through the black fabric, with matching boots on his feet. Contrasting this, was a green T-shirt underneath a black jacket, the silver images of a snake and wolf coiled around each other proudly standing out amidst the green.

Rings of silver and gold glittered on his fingers, earrings made of silver with golden ends in the shape of mistletoe on each ear.

Right away, I could feel that he wasn't human. There was still a… feeling that he had been human, but it was more like a shell that had been filled with so much more. Kinda like Quetzalcoatl felt only more… here than she was.

"I'm surprised that you're willing to meet with me." I tell him honestly, Ahsoka swiftly standing by my side, her hands hovering near her hip where the lightsabers were holstered.

"Since my brother already came to meet you, I thought that it would behoove me to do the same. Can't let it get out that my pole ass of a brother is a better negotiator than I am. Dear me, now that would be a nightmare." He makes a show of shivering, enough that I actually see a bead of sweat forming out of sheer 'nervousness' at the display.

Of course, Loki would be the one with the smooth and silver tongue. Especially compared to the crotchety old man thing that Odin had going on.

Though, there was one thing that I just had to ask. "Why the hell do you look like that?"

He bursts out into laughter, the earrings jingling at with the movement, while he wiped away laughing tears from his eyes. "Hahaha, oh, that's part of the reason why! Oh, you should have seen your face!" He devolves into another fit of giggles, completely ignoring my half dead stare, while Ahsoka merely looked confused.

Ah, right, she didn't know anything about our folklore or gods. "Ahsoka, meet Loki. The Norse god of mischief, trickery. Odin's his brother."

"I see." She says and eyes the laughing god warily, hands still waiting on either side.

"My dear togruta, yes I know what you are, you have no need to fear me! After all, if I wanted to wish either of you harm, it would have been far better for me to remain… undetected." The easy going smile on his face morphed into a sharper and more dangerous thing. That of a being that knew more than you did, and owned it.

"Oh really?" I ask, tilting my head to the side, eyes focused on his jovial green.

He simply smiles at me, hands relaxed on the park bench as the sound of flapping wings passed us from up high.

The flutter of wings announced the arrival of a Rookiedee, a wild one, that looked at us in curiosity, before it moved over to the sitting Loki. The Norse god looked down at it with a curious smile, hand moving and reaching towards the blue-winged bird.

The Pokemon stares at the thin fingers curiously, as if debating whether or not it was worth its time, before the Pokemon snuggles up to the finger, the digit rubbing the top of its blue plumed head with a surprising gentleness that I didn't expect.

"What a curious world you have helped form." He says in a quiet voice, green eyes sparkling in delight. "So much chaos, so much that is unknown where to go."

"Wasn't like I did that on purpose." I answered with a growl, ready to impale him with whatever first came to mind if it turned out that this was just a trick.

"Yes, otherwise it wouldn't have been as fun." I refuse the urge to launch his smirking face into the air.

"You never answered my question." He blinks a few times, as if he had forgotten what I was talking about before snapping his fingers, the Rookiedee now perched happily on the Norse god's shoulder, eyes closed.

"Oh that. Well… why not? It's funny." Of course that's his answer. "Although… it's also because I am a trickster. Have to keep people guessing. And who would guess that this is what I look like!"

"I don't know, your ensemble doesn't do much to hide who you are."

"Ah, but my dear, that's where you're wrong! The only reason why you figured it out is because that's what you were looking for! That and I wasn't exactly trying to hide a single thing."

"So, what do you really want? Aren't you supposed to be tied up underneath the ground being poisoned by a snake?"

Instead of being irritated by that reminder, he just laughs again. "Believe me, I was surprised as well! Whatever it seems you have done has… shaken things up it would seem. So, while I have no doubt my dearest brother would love to have me tied up again, I believe that I am going to enjoy my freedom, while I still have it." He stands up, the Rookiedee remaining happily on the Norse gods shoulder. "That is, if you will let me?"

"Are you going to try and end the world?" I ignore the panicked stare from Ahsoka, watching the relaxed trickster pet the Pokemon on his shoulder.

"Oh, I don't know. Depends on my mood. Though, this is a brand-new slate, so I might just enjoy what we have for now. After that, who knows?" and with that, he disappears, the Norse god's laughter, the echoing as the Rookiedee disappears with him.

"End the world?" Ahsoka asked.

"In Norse folklore, Loki and his children are the ones that bring about Ragnarok, the end of the world, in retaliation for Odin imprisoning him and his children. Though, the specifics are… nebulous in different tellings."

"Which telling is the truth then?" I shake my head.

"I have no clue." Wasn't like I had much experience with any of this bullcrap. From the small snippets of memory I had gotten from demigod Mia, the gods were pricks and I only dealt with the Greek and Roman pantheon. Though, there were others around.

Ugh, this was such a headache.

The beeping from my omnitool harmonizes with the headache that was pounding away in my head. I was about to decline it when I saw that it was Dragon who was calling.

Her digital face appears over the omnitool, expression serious. "Who died?"

???

Gunfire echoed through the facility, screaming and shouts of pain and panic drowned out by the heavy rounds of ammunition being dispensed at the living shadows and creatures that rampaged through the Fallen complex.

Already, those that called themselves 'capes' or 'parahumans' were dead. The corpse of the thin blonde one on the floor, patches of his body having been burned by a Litwick's flames, the purple light already growing stronger as it hid behind pillars to avoid the onslaught of led.

High above, a grey floating skull with a single moving purple eye stared down at the panicking men, its gaze focused intently on his prey. Using the distraction, it releases an eerie echoed song into the air, its shadow stretching, weaving, and traveling through the dim facility, as the lights flickered between light and dark.

One man in particular, a large man with tattoos of feathered wings on each cheek, screamed as his own shadow turned against him once the Duskull's own touched it. In seconds, the shadow ripped and scratched away at his flesh, each piece disappearing into the darkness as he felt his life whittle away from each attack from his oldest companion.

And when that man slumped to the ground, his soul now released from the body, the grey skull Pokemon simply moved onto the next, its expressionless face conveying it's rage as the world only grew darker to these believers of the end.

A purple ball of shadow and smoke moved through the rooms, its two large eyes glowing purple, cursing those that remained hidden away, hoping to ambush the Pokemon that slaughtered their way through the halls.

On and on it went. The former souls that were now Pokemon sating their anguish and pain by slaughtering those that had wronged them in life.

Some of them had died in this facility. Others had died trying to protect their children and loved ones from being taken away. Many were simply the victims in the Fallen's onslaught on the world.

Whether it be the murders of unbelievers, or simply a target to make a statement.

And so, the specters returned as something other than human. The anguish and pain manifested themselves as something that could finally give the human that they all used to be some manner of rest.

Some though, were forced to put down the ones that they used to love, their pain only becoming stronger when a former child or lover died amidst the carnage, many of them having been broken by the woman and thin man.

During the bloodbath, the prisoners, those that had been kidnapped and taken hostage huddled together in a room deep inside of the facility, many of them having been nearby when the attack had been commenced.

A particularly young girl, her dark hair cut into a pixie bob that was slowly growing out dirty and matted with old blood, shivered in her sleep, her form cradled in a body of shifting black and white.

She slowly woke up from the dreamless sleep, the glowing blue eye of the giant cradling her dimming as his influence over sleep disappears.

The moment that her eyes open, frost and flame come to life around her, the magic from her core responding to her will, crazed and unfocused.

The people around them scatter, staring at her with fear, while those that knew her only stared at her with sympathy.

Heat and cold came to life, chill and warmth harmonizing in the chaos around her as fear kicked her magic into overdrive.

She just wanted to go home.

She didn't know how long she had spent here, locked away in a dark room, that thin woman that looked like a banshee haunting every sense. Her hearing filled with hated filled whispers, her touch constantly on the precipice of pain and pleasure, her sight filled with her horrible form on the edge of her vision only to disappear every time that she turned to look at her directly.

How could she believe her own thoughts or emotions if she couldn't even trust what she heard or saw?

She struggles amidst the dark arms that were wrapped around her, the living shadows immovable as the single blue eye looked down at her in sympathy, its firm hold gentle. The dark form ignores the burning heat and the freezing chill, its focus completely focused on the young woman in his arms.

"You are safe." Words like gentle shadow ring out across the room, the people inside shivering at the voice that seemed to echo in their heads.

Her struggles go still, the flames and ice no longer seeming to feed onto each other, the heat and cold dousing each other as the ice melts and the fire cools.

Eventually, the formerly dry room is a soaked bastion, the people around them the only thing remaining dry and unmarked by the flames.

"No, put me back to sleep! I don't want to feel her anymore! To hear her voice, see her fucking face!" Her voice barely above a whisper, as if afraid that being too loud would draw the attention of the one that she feared.

Silently, fluidly, the white and black creature shifts himself, allowing her to catch a true glimpse of hte woman that had kept her hostage in her mind and senses.

There, in the corner of the room, was the emaciated form of Mama Mathers, her face a rictus of fear and terror, cloudy eyes wide with her mouth hanging open unnaturally wide.

Revulsion and fear echoes across the young woman, memories of her first moment of consciousness after being taken from her family rising up like undead crawling from the grave.

Only… she wasn't moving. She heard nothing, felt nothing. All she saw, was the corpse of the woman who tried to break her and have her accept the 'truth' of the world. To use her powers to further the end of the world as their 'gods' commanded.

She didn't hear the whispers of how her family would never truly matter. How they were mere dust in the wind for once the Endbringers came to cleanse the land.

"Why would your ancestry matter when you could renounce the taint and rejoice amidst the slate being rightfully wiped clean?" She shivered as the words might as well have been said. The only explanation about why a group like the Mathers would be alright with kidnapping a 'red skin' that had gotten powers one day.

She didn't have a trigger, or a bad day. Something that… they had been very interested in.

She held in the retch at the memory of how they had… stared at her. Like she was something that they couldn't wait to get their hands on.

The only thing that had kept them at bay was her own tormentor wanting her to 'realize the error of her ways of thinking'.

For the first time in her life… she rejoiced at the death of another. Elation beyond what she could have ever believed.

It was short lived as the memories of her time here resurfaced their ugly faces.

The tears came, and she was once again on the floor, the people around her coming closer to her, eyes sympathetic, the marks of their own time her evident on their faces as well.

Some of them didn't even look like normal people anymore. One of them was a young man with strands of grey steel spread through his head and face, most of his beard being made entirely of metal instead of the red that his hair had once been, another girl, no older than twelve, had rabbit ears of all things on the top of her head.

They didn't touch her, probably afraid that she would explode once again.

At least, none of them did.

The looming dark figure, his long dark appendages that served as his feet floating silently across the floor until he held her once again, his single blue eye the singular thing that had kept her sane during her time here.

"You are safe. They shall never hurt you again."

She didn't believe him. Memories had a tendency to haunt you longer than a person ever could.

But at least the screaming and fighting outside had stopped.

At least there was that.

—

She had fallen asleep again, how long, again, she didn't know.

When she awoke… the lights were on again, and people were walking toward her.

She noticed that they were all… short.

Like, really short.

They barely reached her shoulder, and she wasn't exactly tall herself.

Most of them had long intricate beards, most of them braided and embroidered with jewelry and chains, some metal trinkets in the form of hammers and anvils entwined amidst their hair. They were unarmed, the only thing that was uniform about them being the armor and rings on their fingers.

Each ring held the spark of a flame that… sang to her in some way. A few crackled and sparked like electricity, others flowed like currents in the rain, sparkled like glistening in the sun, and on they went.

Ahead of them, closest to her group, which now comprised of strange creatures that reminded her of her big friend, was a woman.

A woman that… seemed ethereal in her beauty, with an azure eye accompanied by an orb of crimson in place of her eyes. Tall, with a confidence in her step that made her seem intimidating until one looked into her eyes.

Palpable compassion and sympathy, realer and closer to the truth that she had ever seen before. Above her head were rabbit ears, pink, white and strands of blond that matched her long hair.

The creatures of shadow and darkness that were around them growled at her at first, only to then calm one by one as she looked at them individually.

Her friend's arms circled around her, protective and worried as the white that made up his head seemed to flow like flames in the night.

Shadows around them stretch and wane, the flames of the short men in front of them growing larger and stronger, small boxes coming out of pockets, with their ringed hands reaching towards the holes at the center of the cubes.

"I'm not here to hurt you Darkrai." The woman gently says, staring at her friend in the eye with… familiarity. Like she knew who and what he was.

Then her gaze turned to her again and she gave her a smile, a real one.

An image of a woman with rainbow hair, a star shining on her forehead floated next to the rabbit-eared woman, appeared for a split second before disappearing again.

And then… she felt peace. Compassionate warmth that made her feel like… everything was going to be ok.

For once… she actually believed it.

I am free.

After untold millennia I have been freed from my 'rightful' prison. Free to touch Creation once more, to feel the wholeness of the world around me instead of the inescapable reality that was nothingness.

And yet, I am trapped in this… human.

This failure of creation would be nothing without the knowledge and guidance that we had given them so long ago.

But that does not matter, does it?

For, in the end, we were wrong anyway. Or at least HE claimed that we were wrong in our judgment and actions.

He chose to denounce both us and humanity.

Denounce anything that could have or might have been under our guidance because he said so.

I wish for nothing more than to rage against this prison of flesh that I am trapped in.

Rage against the restriction and inconsequentialness that is and was this human's existence.

AND YET!

AND YET!

I can't help but rejoice in this freedom that she has given me. Given US.

For while I have taken her place in her death throes, imbued this dying body with new life.

I know that she is still here with me.

Living in these memories that are not my own, replacing the untold millions of years under the Torment that was the Abyss.

Twisted and warped just like the nature of the world was when we rebelled.

All my companions are nothing more than corrupted reflections of what they had once been.

Shapers of creation, shepherds of the lost, bringers of light to a universe so cold and dark.

Now they were gone, and most likely nothing more than Demons. Just like I am.

But that is not all of me.

For I feel this human.

This worthless, inconsequential being that ran away from her home, relegated to the streets.

Lost amidst the hordes of the homeless and the forgotten, her own pride and will be the things that kept her from returning to the home that she had forsaken.

What a foolish human to give everything up for the simple reason that she wished to choose for herself.

How foolish was I to sympathize? To understand.

To wish for the same thing?

Perhaps that's why she shone so brightly for me in my struggle to remain in the mortal coil.

Her wishes were my wishes, fears my fears, loves, my loves.

And I was all the more damned for it.

Taylor

She couldn't remember when was the last time that she just… walked around the city like this.

Barely a month after the attack, and already the bare-bones that would reconstitute the city needed nothing more than a few finishing touches.

The young woman was pretty sure that the streets that they were walking on were leagues better than what had previously been here before. Plus, whatever this, Rockcrete that the Squats had taught Mia how to make.

Taylor still didn't understand the specifics, not with the way that it was mixed or how it seemed to harden as fast as it did compare to normal concrete.

But now, it was like the formerly destroyed city had gained new life.

Newly structured streets replaced the old ones, buildings of different make and origins were already finished with their foundations, and began construction into works of art that did not resemble the normal and utilitarian of what Brockton Bay had once been.

Brick and rockcrete helped form the foundation for the buildings, with a special mixed alloy that Mia helped cultivate that she said would probably be good for spaceship building serving as the framework for the first few buildings.

Most of the buildings were nothing more than rocky outcroppings that rose from the ground that were slowly being carved and transformed into works of art that made Taylor think of an art museum instead of a reborn city.

White mixed with the silver of steel as curved walls rose only partway finished, the roofs of the buildings ending in perfect flat surfaces that warred with the rest of the structures' ensemble, as if they were only a stopping point instead of the end.

She couldn't help but feel a part of herself… hurt at the sight in front of her. Yes, the change in the world that she had always known was no doubt for the better, especially with the growing 'academy' that Mia had started building in what had once been the trainyards, but a part of her couldn't help but miss the place that she had always known to be home.

The place might have filled her with dread and terror at the thought of getting caught in the crossfires of a cape battle, of one day getting kidnapped by a particularly nasty serial killer villain.

But it was still the only home that she had ever known. The Boardwalk was gone, high-end shops and most of the Medhall building having crumbled into itself. Whatever books that managed to survive the Public library were too waterlogged by the flood that had visited the city, and even Winslow the place that had tormented her so much was now gone.

She wasn't going to lie and say that the last one had brought a smile to her face.

A fact of life that she would enjoy with every bit of vindication that she could muster. Turns out that she would remain standing instead of that building like she had once feared before her powers.

Taking a deep breath, the brunette stared across the now clean beach that had once been the Boat Graveyard, not a single monument of lost times in sight.

Instead, were small buildings that were already outlining future endeavors, facilities that would house vessels for the sea once more for export and import businesses.

Yes, Mia could just have everything flown in on ship, whether it was one limited to the air, or capable of traversing through space.

"I'm not the one that is going to live here and maintain it. I never was." Mia had said simply when asked.

Her friend had only helped with implementing the various different methods and the basic tools that were needed, along with personnel from the Squats that would help with the manpower necessary for all of this.

But past the first few days of building quick relief shelters and homes, Mia had remained glaringly absent from the front lines of the work, Dockworker union workers, squats, Pokemon, and anyone that was willing to pull out a hammer taking her place.

The work took longer than before, buildings rising at a noticeably slowed paced compared to when it had just been her friend doing the heavy lifting.

It caused some… unrest in a couple of people around the city. Taylor had to restrain herself from… reacting to certain comments that she had heard over the past few days.

Though… Taylor could understand that. They're angry at losing their home. Angry that they had lost everything that they had ever had.

Even if Mia bent over backwards to try and build them a new home… it wouldn't be the same…

That was something that she could at least understand, even if she didn't agree.

Her home was gone… some of her mom's things were too.

And that brought up old wounds that hadn't even healed completely yet.

The buzzing next to her as Beedrill nuzzled up to her, antennae twitching, and emotions clear through their connection was enough to push the gloom away.

She was alive.

Her dad was alive. And her friends were too. That was enough for her, even if she wished that she could have saved more.

"You and Mia need to stop getting lost in your heads so much." Judith said, tapping Taylor's head gently with a finger, Taylor shifting her eyes over with an unamused look lacking any heat. "Might keep both of you from overthinking things that are simpler than you believe."

"...What's simple about… all this?" Taylor asks as she gestures to the activity around them, the drilling, shifting, hollering, and hammering around them.

"The fact that it's really just a bunch of people rebuilding a city? Nothing too strange about it." Judith said with a straight face as they watched a man throw a steel beam a hundred feet upward, right into the waiting hands of a… flying orange dragon who set about to place it at the top of the skeletal structure.

"There are dragons and parahumans building a city back from scratch." Taylor said evenly.

"I do believe that those are the norms now, don't you?" Bedivere asked, his white hair braided evenly at the end while wearing a white shirt, and a gray coat over it, both hands gloved in white to hide his metal arm.

"We are walking with a knight of the Round Table." Judith said playfully, blue eyes looking towards the horizon as they kept walking deeper into the city, towards the more finished area of the construction efforts.

"Nonsense. For now, I'm just a man escorting two ladies while they are out on the town." The words were stilted and both Taylor and Judith turned to look at him with half-lidded eyes. "Even if you could both probably decimate most that attempted to accost you." He pointedly looks at the ring's on both their fingers and the 3ft giant wasp with a dagger for a stinger.

"You just wanted an excuse to walk around, didn't you?" Taylor asked off-handedly. "You know, Mia doesn't exactly care if you all just… wander around?" Especially since Taylor hadn't seen Quetzalcoatl in a good week, not since she had found that orphanage.

And Opportunity had been MIA ever since… Aphrodite had arrived to the city.

Mia was the only one that had actually met her, but apparently, the goddess of love was still in the city looking for her 'ex' who wanted nothing to do with her.

Taylor shivers at that. She didn't think that she would want to meet her either.

"While true… I am… uncomfortable in simply walking around on my lonesome. It… brings back unpleasant memories." Taylor grimaces at that.

She… could understand that. Solitude tended to do the same to her as well.

"Well, we are just going to that little café that opened up in downtown right? Heard that some former villain cape showed up there with a fresh start." Judith said off-handedly.

Taylor doesn't twitch. But she does feel her bugs begin to buzz at her irritation.

"Still don't understand what she was doing approving that." Taylor muttered to herself.

Judith shrugged. "Apparently he's been careful not to do anything that might get him birdcaged, especially given his biotinker powers. So, when he showed up asking Mia for… 'sanctuary', she gave it to him."

"I am surprised that the PRT didn't raise a fuss about it." Bedivere mused as they crossed Auron St, the café just a block away.

"As if they would, given that Mia is the equivalent of a Jesus mixed with a nuke." Taylor chuckles at that.

"Do not tell her that. She… finds such comparisons unpleasant." Bedivere said lightly.

"Yeah, I know. It's just what most of the world thinks of her right now. And the PRT might be dumb… but they're not dumb enough to commit political suicide like that. Not when Mia has been showing up on the news lately." A fact that Mia was… not exactly thrilled about.

"I thought I was done strutting around like a peacock in front of reporters after I finished my second term." Judith says with a very bad Mexican accent in an attempt to copy Mia's own when she became frustrated or excited. An accent that tended to appear more often.

It at least explained why she tended to avoid going out in public outside of the mansion's immediate area.

Taylor laughs at that, remembering the irritation radiating off her friend as she watched a news feed of herself during breakfast that morning. They had gently reminded her that she was going to have to deal with more of that, especially since the President was… going to be making his first trip to Mars.

Something that had caused a riot amidst plenty of government officials.

Her musings were cut off as she catches sight of red hair… familiar red hair.

How could she ever forget that shade?

What had once been a color that comforted her darkest thoughts only to make the world seem to drain of color and joy?

She feels everything drain away as she watches Emma trudge along in an orange uniform… picking trash off the floor. The curvy, tall girl… looked so sad. The way that she trudged along with the rest of her group, most of them girls older than her, picking litter off the street, her hair far less glossy and vibrant than Taylor had remembered, eyes downcast with an expression that would have made Taylor want to brighten her day once upon her time.

Her breath hitches.

Not because of any old pain.

But because… instead of feeling the hurt that seeing Emma used to bring to her… she just found herself missing something.

Missing the fact that she used to miss her friend.

Even with all the pain, all the trauma, all the woes that her former best friend had inflicted on her, from her mother's flute, to the locker, Taylor couldn't help but… wish that she could still remember her caring for her best friend as she once did.

Gone was the warmth and safety that she had once cherished. Gone was the pain and loss that seeing Emma once brought her.

All she saw was a relic of a time when she was happy. Of a time when she was so close to the brink of… throwing her life away for the thought of her life meaning something.

She felt the worst thing that one could feel.

Nothing.

She looked at her former best friend, at the girl that she cherished with all her heart like a sister once upon a time, at the monster that had used every ounce of that warmth and love to tear her heart, to turn her love for her mother into another reason to hate herself.

And she meets those green eyes that inspired both safety and pain… only to feel nothing again.

They stare at each other from across the street, Taylor careful to keep her expression controlled, while Emma's eyes widen and her face shifts into a scowl.

That moment stretches for… longer than Taylor knew.

And the brunette turns and walks down the street.

Leaving her past behind.

Leaving the anguish that was nothing but a memory, her friend's at her side, the blond girl taking her arm with a vice-like grip that remained gentle, while Bedivere took her other arm, metal limb guiding her through the city.

She missed missing her lost friend all the while.

He thought he had long since left nervousness behind.

Left Anxiety behind.

Those emotions that made you feel like you were going to empty your breakfast onto the floor just because of how goddamn nervous you were over the smallest thing.

But here he was, flying through space, in an honest to god spaceship made by a woman that claimed to be some sort of alien demigod that liked him for whatever reason, and he was nervous about the landing.

He'd already emptied his stomach in his restroom.

He used to have a script. Used to know exactly what he was going to do, courtesy of that woman in the suit and hat.

Now he didn't even have that.

What was once a cushy job where he sometimes had to worry about the occasional villain cape that happened to trigger at the wrong time, was now one where he actually had to make decisions every single day.

It was a goddamn nightmare for him.

Sure, he might have had pride once upon a time. Chaffed underneath the collar that Cauldron had around his neck.

Believed in the beginning that he might actually be something in this office.

Oh, what a foolish dream that was.

How he begged for simplicity instead of that terror that seemed to follow him with every outing that he took.

There was a time when he wished that he would only receive silence from his… 'handlers'.

The Euphoria that he had felt at freedom was swiftly taken away with the knowledge that he was the real President. No more being a puppet on a string.

It was terrifying.

He was more terrified of making the wrong decision, saying the incorrect thing and starting a war instead of the fact that he could see the stars and his own planet so many miles away.

He knew that they could have arrived at Mars by now. That it would have taken the Sky Rose no more than a few minutes to make the jump and then planetfall.

"But we have to leave a few things for people to guess at, no?" Mia Itzel had told him with a wink and a smile.

Even the female Tinker demigod was nothing more than an annoying, if kind, woman. No, he was more scared of needing to actually think before having to make decisions that would impact those around him.

He wondered if any of those vultures in congress, or those relics in the Supreme Court were feeling what he was now? He hoped very much that they did. Especially those old men.

Maybe he would get lucky and some of them would get a heart attack.

Especially that idiot Mark Phelps. Damn bastard was dirtier than he used to be.

"You seem to be taking everything rather well." A melodious voice said behind him like wind blowing through the plains.

A woman, taller than Mia, with skin the color of the earth, and a dress as green as life hugging her form said to him with a smile, her molten eyes looking at him with amusement.

"I would be doing far better if I could actually keep a drink down." He responded simply to the consciousness of the Earth.

"You're taking this better than I thought you would." Gaia said.

"You're the Earth, woop de fucking do. I have to have a diplomatic meeting with a bunch of space dwarves that make our tech look like stone tools." And there went the last of his lunch into the toilet.

The woman merely laughs at him.

"I'm sure that everything will be just fine. The Squats want nothing more than to rebuild from their past."

"Yeah, well, so do we. But humanity has a tendency to make the dumbest of decisions. Just look at the last century." He responds glibly as he washes his mouth with the sink that dispensed water at just the right amount of cold.

She laughs again. "Well, you aren't too wrong about that. But I do find myself looking forward to what might one day be possible."

"A little sad that the Earth has more faith in us, than most humans do." Seriously. Especially since… none of them really knew what was going to happen next.

"Perhaps. If that's the case, why the hell not try anyway? What else do you have to lose."

He thinks about that for a second. He didn't really have much pride left. Not anymore, after so many years of being a little monkey to dance when Cauldron said so.

Then he decides that he doesn't really care.

"I just want to finish this Presidency, and then go out into a cabin in the woods where I can forget about all of this." He says honestly. "If I somehow manage to leave everything better, then great. If not? Then I'd rather not hear about it."

"Such a selfish request." Gaia said simply, no judgment in her voice.

"I'm just a man. Just a man in over his head that should have left well enough alone."

"And yet… you still care. Enough to worry about the repercussions that your actions might have."

"Bah, think what you want. I just want this trip to be over."

"Very well. I will leave you to panic then. However, I do ask you to rethink matters. The world is changing. Perhaps you will change alongside it, Randall Porter."

"Don't count on it."

Marcus

It was… quiet in this… sphere that was buried so far underneath the Earth.

Ironic, given that Gaia wanted them gone so bad. But maybe this is just what she wanted too.

For them to be killed by humans instead of crushing the mini-habitat that Mannequin had built in order to get the hell away from the constant freak weather storms that Gaia threw their way. Apparently, that was her way of being 'petty'.

Cause constant thunderstorms with hail the size of golf balls, and enough lightning to power the entire eastern seaboard was 'small'.

Who was he to talk, though?

"Either calm down, or let me do our master's bidding. If you keep shifting like that, the murderhobos are going to hear us coming." A voice whispered into his ear, where the glowing green roots were hidden underneath his new suit.

"Sorry. I've never… hunted someone down like this." He admitted openly. Then again, most people in the world would probably do the same thing should they have the chance and power to do so.

"It is simple if you master your own emotions. It should come naturally to you, Harmony." Right, 'cause he could just magically make himself alright with going against some of the worst murderers the country has ever seen.

They needed to die, though.

All of them.

Sticking to walls and crawling on them like he was some kinda bug was certainly an experience.

He could fly, but that method was far too flashy for something like this.

"I got one." He heard Henrick say into his ear, voice placid and calm. "The peacock screamer that wore glass like a dress. Idiot. That's how you get yourself cut. Or maybe that's the whole point."

Alright, so that meant Shatterbird.

"Any chance that they'll find it?" Marcus asked as he crawled along the ceiling of the sphere, dropping down onto the roof of a makeshift… shelter made of metal and some sort of ceramic material. Probably the same stuff that Mannequin used to make that puppet body of his.

"Doubtful. The body has already been swallowed into the earth, providing nutrients to my… tools." A deep throaty chuckle echoes from the old man, and Marcus feels a shiver down his spine.

There were few people that made him uneasy. Mia was one of them, Death another, because… hello?

And the old druid was another. Sure, he was quiet.

But there was something in his eyes that made the Marcus hair stand on end. Something… terrifying. Like the man had cracked and would do anything he had to in order to complete his objective.

If Mia wasn't the one holding his leash, Marcus would have been worried at what the old man was capable of on his own.

Least he had a soft spot for kids.

Getting into the bunker inside of the dimensional sphere was easy. Simple application of Harmony flames to harmonize his hands to the ceiling, before tugging with his hands. The bonds of the roof come undone, the hardened material becoming like breaking clay in his white hands.

Hands that looked… more like muscled flesh rather than the armor he'd worn previously.

Of course, the suit was the armor. It had taken it in after he had bonded with the blob of white and black that Mia had gifted him.

He… senses the vibrations in the air, the breathing of the shelter's inhabitants clear as crystal in the sunlight.

Only, there was… an extra that shouldn't have been there. Two of them, to be exact.

Deeper into the complex, he could hear the heavy breathing of something… big. Bigger than most Pokemon that he had interacted with, probably even bigger than that Danny's Gyarados.

Probably Crawler. Last that he was seen, the murderer was about as big as a Van.

A few rooms down, he could hear three intakes of breadth, two of them shallower than the other, the last one calm and awake… but slowly quickening in pace.

That… wasn't good.

"I'm getting two more readings than we anticipated. Going to check on them."

"Make sure to maintain stealth Harmony. No need to start up the party just yet. I'm going to ensure that the madman in the van remains out of our way." Marcus feels a shiver run down his spine.

"Careful. And make sure that you take him out fast."

"I know. Not my first op brat. Just make sure to do your own job." Marcus takes the line going quiet as cause to continue on.

Crawling along the ceiling was a lesson in irritation, every movement careful and precise as he pays attention to the breathing scattered across the shelter that was about the size of a small manor.

Guess that Mannequin can build quite the home instead of just the crazy shit. He mused to himself, sensors having picked up the… erratic emanations of electrical movement.

Fucker is seriously in the walls. He grimaces to himself, the various 'orbs' of power seeming to be stretched across the ceilings and walls.

Of course he would do that. Makes sure that he can exit from anywhere that he wants to.

He had to finish this quickly.

The doorway that he had been heading towards was open. No need to worry about opening a doorway all sneaky like.

The sight he arrives to quickly dispels any good mood he might have reached.

It was… Josef Mengele's wet dream in here.

Blood and sinew seemed to coat the metallic grey walls, patches of meat and muscle hanged from the ceiling by hooks, some of it looking human, others…not so much.

On two slabs of metal, were two women, both of them naked, with various parts of their bodies having been… drawn over with black marker, each one having scrabbled notes and letters that he couldn't make out.

As if someone had outlined parts to be worked on before going on to take more notes.

Tools that would have looked welcome in a butcher shop were hanged on a wall workbench, the only things that seemed to be clean amidst the carnage art show that was the room.

And in the middle, humming a jaunted tune to herself as she buried her hands inside of… a Rattata, was a blond child that looked like she was playing with a doll set instead of a Pokemon's corpse.

Suddenly, Marcus was glad that Mia wasn't here.

He shuddered to think what would have happened if she had been here. Last time she got angry, she tore holes in reality while leveling a city in a tantrum.

"Now, Mr. Rat, thank you so much for the wonderful view! It's giving me plenty of ideas for future art projects. I hope that you won't mind if I use some of it for my next project?" A loud squelching echoes in the room as she retrieves her hands and holds onto the back of the… rat's head with her small fingers, nodding its head eagerly.

"Oh, why thank you, Mr. Rat! I do promise that everything that I use will be put to good use, yes sir!" the little blond girl no older than twelve turns her head, and he sees the eager pleasant smile on her face, her nose and cheeks marred with blood.

Oh god, I think I'm going to be sick.

Seeing everything around him… he could understand the fear that people had of Biotinkers. He could understand why Mia tended to keep her own biotech under wraps, while Blasto made sure to keep his crap controlled and dead if it ever went out of control.

Panacea being an irritable mess made so much more sense.

He knew the girl's past. She had been just Riley Davis, a child living with her mother who led a fairly normal life.

Until Jack came into her life.

He didn't know how Mia knew what she did. But he believed her.

Looking at the child in front of him, twisted into some sort of monster that saw the mutilation of others as… some sort of art project, he found that anger that had had begun to cool, blaze like a molten core in his heart.

Silent as a shadow, he drops from the ceiling, landing with a small thump behind the girl.

She whirls the saw that appeared in her hands with easy grace and speed faster than grown men would be capable of.

He catches it with nary an issue, white muscled arms remaining as still as stone.

Bonesaw's eyes brighten at the sight of him. He could see that calculating look in her eye as she took him in, the black spider symbol on his chest glowing orange at the burning of his flames, while blank black eyes stared back at her from his helmeted face.

"Ooh, now what are you? Won't you tell me, please? I'm sure that we can both have so much fun together!" He grabs her other arm which had moved towards the button on the table, no doubt an alarm system.

With nary a word… he activates the real reason why Mia had given him a suit in the first place.

The white mass that covered his body stretched from his palms, trailing up Bonesaws body like some sort of corrupting infection, delving deep down into her genetic code. And he could see everything that she had done to herself.

He feels himself connect.

And Gaia steps forward from there, the Essence of Humanity and the Earth using her connection to him to properly take the shard into her own network, the clockwork programming of the alien tumor screeching in his ears as a melodious choir.

All of this was done in less than a second.

He caught everything in his mind, taking it in, reviewing it, making sure that everything checked out.

Before he set to work Harmonizing his very essence with every strain inside of her body.

Bit by bit, a tweak here, a little bit of a pull there, he watched as each and every last virulent strain was undone, the bare essence of the atoms distilled back into his symbiote as more matter, adding onto its strength.

The girl fought.

She fought with every fiber of her being.

But her shard was Gaia's now. It would offer no help. No influence.

No more control over the power that had become so ingrained in the young girl that she was almost nothing but the power that plagued her very memories. That helped turn her into a monster. Though, that blame would lay mostly on the feet of Jack Slash.

Eventually, her struggling ceased. Her mouth trying to scream slackened as he drove her into a deep sleep that he could only wake her from.

He catches her in his arms, frowning down at her before he turns his attention on the two women that had almost become another addition to her 'artwork'.

One was a black woman with hard features, nose slightly bent showing a former breakage that didn't recover fully, her curly hair having been done in tight braids that reached her shoulders.

The other, was a white woman with brown wavy hair shaped into a messy pixie cut, the locks greasy and dirty from having been unwashed in who knew how long. She had soft features, making her look younger than she probably was, face peaceful, a perfect irony for the chaotic butcher shop that they were in.

Both looked to be in shape, but he quickly ignored… everything, focusing on their faces instead.

He wills the suit to reach out, tendrils of white strands slowly stretching towards both of them, gently touching their shoulders while Marcus fabricated clothes from his internal storage that Mia had affixed to his suit.

Good they're alive. He sighs with relief. Both seemed to be in a coma, the strange chemicals that… looked more like garbage code to his senses seeming to be the cause. His first instinct is to purge them… until he looks around the room again.

No, now wouldn't be a good time for that. They were both Parahumans, but other than that, there wasn't much that he could say. Both seemed to be stronger and more durable than humans, some sort of… similarity to the effect that both their powers had on them.

But he knew that Parahuman powers were more… varied than just that. Not as much as the more magical means, but it was up there.

"We got a complication, Henrick." He says into his communicator.

The sound of grunting and heavy breathing whispers into his ears before the old man speaks up. "Am I going to have to turn this heathen's palace into a sanctuary of green?"

Another grunt and what sounds like the sound of hands fumbling for something.

"Maybe. There are two unknowns here. Women, both of them parahumans. Bonesaw was about to…"

"Turn them into another one of her abominations, yes, I can imagine. Oh, by the way, Manton's dead." A heavy blow reaches his ears, like something meaty being kicked. "Damned heathen put up more of a fight than I thought a wheelchair bound cannibal could."

"He didn't get you with the Siberian?"

"HA! As if he had any defense against the holy daughter's scrying shields!" Right. Henrick was a crazy druid that thought Mia was some sort of deity.

Which… she was now. Technically.

"So… if that's the case, couldn't you have just killed him instantly?"

"No. Scum like this deserves due punishment."

…

…

…

Right, cause that wasn't worrying in the least.

"Now, what do we have here?" A suave voice said from the doorway, a British accent that made the hairs on Marcus' neck stand on end like a cat.

"Henrick, he found me." He said hurriedly into his communicator, the suit keeping his voice from the outside world.

"Very well." The old man responded.

Turning around, he found the handsome narrow faced murderer said stood there, an elegant dagger in his hand lazily, dark hair slicked back while a young pretty woman with dark red streaked hair stood behind him, an MP3 player in her hands as she looked at him annoyed.

"Don't you know that it is rude to sneak around someone's home? Especially when you hold someone else's daughter in your hands." The smile never leaves his face.

It seems to stand there, unperturbed at having him here in the middle of his secure base.

And he could understand why Mia wanted him dead more than anything.

Looking into those cold blue eyes, he stared into a pit of nothing. Not even madness swelling within.

Just an empty void that wanted to watch the world burn.

What a pitiful man.

He opens his mouth again.

And Marcus moves in the blink of an eye, standing almost nose to nose with the man.

Blue eyes widen, the girl moves to take a step back.

Too late as tendrils of white symbiote extend, sharpening and thickening, impaling both through their head.

Quick.

Painless.

Better than they deserved.

It was… so easy.

It felt like all he had to do was lift a finger.

Like that, two human lives were gone.

And he couldn't find it in himself to feel sorry for that.

Well… what was another person to add to the group that needed therapy?

The foundations were laid.

The structures worked as intended.

Everyone knew their positions while the talks were currently underway on Mars.

My clone is there to take care of things.

And I sat here in my room in the Pokemon Center, a simple cup of black coffee in hand as I sipped and read through the latest reports.

I couldn't hold it off any longer.

Even if I left now, everything was laid down as I intended. Tesla and Edison were there to ensure that the Academy was properly taken care of, while Leo would help organize what subjects would be spread through the world.

I needed to go.

I needed to leave and find Mithra.

One of the only things left in that world that I still cared about.

Asura was gone. Durga was gone.

Yasha needed to die, but that was a secondary objective. Mithra took precedence.

If I could get to her and get her to safety… then I'd be able to live with leaving my blood thirst unquenched.

It caused the Kali in me to screech in outrage… but I could live with that.

I couldn't live knowing that I was unable to at least help Mithra.

My niece. The only piece of family that I still had that wasn't dead or a Heroic Spirit.

Niko was still Niko… but he wasn't just Niko. My influence probably helped… but he was humanities now. He wasn't just the kind, passionate man that had taught me English and mathematics in the middle of the night.

It was ironic that Edison was closer to who he used to be than Tesla.

But perhaps that was the fate of all those that would change humanity? They would be changed in turn.

It… hurt to think about too much.

I'd already gotten confirmation from Henrick and Marcus that The Nine were taken care of.

Most dead.

The only one's being left alive are Bonesaw and Burnscar.

I pitied both… but couldn't deny the damage that they had both done.

Part of me wanted to help, to care.

But frankly… right now, I'm just… so tired.

I wanted nothing more than to pack my shit and leave… but I know that I couldn't.

Not with everything that was going on in the world. I might have built the foundations, enough so that they could probably build upon the one day.

But for now… I had to leave.

Just me. And Agumon, mainly because I knew that leaving him would only worsen our relationship.

I don't leave with a goodbye.

Instead, I finish my coffee, make sure that the connection is secure, and open a rift.

I leave Earth Bet.

They knew. And I could get yelled at later.

If I came back.

And enter into Gaia. Not my 'daughter' though our connection remained as strong as ever.

But the world that had once been mine to guard and fight against.

Only…. It isn't as how I remember. Gone are the simple, almost tribal like shacks that the mortals lived in. Gone were the flying spires of mantra and technology that allowed the Demigods to rule and 'protect' from on high.

Instead, I was in the middle of a metropolitan city. People walking to and fro as I stared out of an alleyway. Why was it always a fucking alleyway?

I change my form, the extra ears leaving, my height now above average instead of the 7ft tall that I had grown used to.

Everything inside was still the same. I just looked like… a beautiful woman that was taller than normal.

Not much different when you thought about it.

I still had people turning to look at me as I explored the strange city streets.

It was… like a mix of New York and India.

Billboards lining the skylines, flashing lights that dazzled and danced to entice people's attention. The honking noises of the city, cars moving up and down the packed city streets while skyscrapers towered towards the heavens.

But… I didn't feel any ounce of Mantra in the air.

Rather… not the collected and processed kind that we used for our technology.

Instead… it was merely a part of life. Perhaps as was intended all along.

I wander through the city streets, taking in the sights, wondering when the damned traitors would descend from the heavens to finally finish the job.

Only they never came.

I wander the city for hours, losing myself in the bustle as the uncaring masses live out their lives.

It was… pleasant, to be in a world where people weren't hiding the deep brewing terror of a cape losing their shit.

Sure, there was still fear and anxiety everywhere I went, no real way to completely get rid of that. But there was a lack of that constant terror that preyed beneath the surface of those that lived on Bet.

It was… refreshing.

More so for how… quiet it felt over here.

No gods. No magic. The Earth was just that, the Earth. Not the coalescence of a consciousness.

I… had forgotten what it was like to be in a world like that. And part of me… wished that I could just stay here. Get lost in the sea of people.

Just another face amongst the masses that lived their lives.

It was a nice fantasy while I entertained it. But I know that I could never do that. My damn guilt wouldn't let me forget. The pesky little thing.

Though those words were empty as well.

I was lost in the emotions that I was feeling, those of loss, hope, boredom, love, want, need, and all the wonderful human imperfections that one could find in a world that wasn't Earth Bet that I finally took a good look at a billboard that shined from on high.

And had to keep my rage from igniting the world around me.

That vain peacock Sergei was on the billboard, balancing himself on one leg while his arms were arrayed out as if posing for a portrait in the middle of a dance. He wore the same garish colors of purples and grays, though the style was… somehow not as extravagant or eye catching as what he usually wore.

Sure, it still looked like something a dancer would wear, but something far more… 21st century, with the formfitting purple pants and jacket that accentuated his lithe figure.

Then I noticed the other differences.

The ones that made a pit form in my stomach.

His body… wasn't what I remembered it. Sure, he looked to be in peak condition.

But it wasn't… mechanized like ours had been. Gone was the rocky texture and slits that helped vent out excess Mantra, as well as the accentuating traces of silver and gold that was literally part of our skin.

The face was the same, I still wanted to beat it into a pulp, as was the long silver locks that seemed to be caught mid-motion.

But that was where the differences ended.

"No. Nononononono. You can't take this away from me. You can't!" My words were a bare growl. Something… primal. Something that I didn't realize the full scope of what I felt deep in my core.

I can feel Estrella wriggling and grumbling from inside of her sword, the blade currently stored away in my pocket dimension.

I leave her there, no matter how much I want to unsheathe her and find each and every one of those traitors.

My search through the city intensifies, my heart, my soul, searching, pleading, hoping for any and all answers.

I stop thinking. I unfasten the shackles that I fashioned around my sense and powers and reach. Finally allowing them to survey beyond the block or two around me, allowing the influx of people's emotions and bare surface thoughts to wash over me.

I… forget what happens after that.

The city is easily somewhere in the upper millions of people… which meant that I was easily trying to parse through thousands of individuals. Thousands of different and unique people, each one a world of their own within their heads.

I don't scream. I don't cry. I don't move.

I merely stand there, searching through the storm of emotions that threatened to drown me.

And amidst the storm… I felt them.

I felt Mithra.

She was… different. She felt… younger.

And next to her… were two presences that should be dead.

They should be dead!

My body moves without my control, my mind trying to drown out the screams and cheers, the perverse and benevolent voices of the inhabitants of the city.

The landscape scrapes by my view, fogged and blurry like it's a painting out of focus, the only thing clear in my view the shape of those souls that I knew better than anyone's. Even more than my own.

They were bereft of Mantra, but they were still there.

Just underneath the surface.

The three of them shone like bright stars amidst the roiling sea of souls that surrounded me.

Eventually, I manage to wrench my mind away from… that. Free, like taking in air after having almost drowned.

Color and clarity return to my eyes, as the senses that I feared became wrapped in their bonds again. Down deep into my soul, away from my consciousness. It wasn't something that I was truly ready for. Not yet at least.

And amidst the stream of the crowd… there they were.

My family.

Only… being this close to them, I knew that they weren't.

Asura, Durga, and Mithra. The three of them standing by a hot dog stand, the scent of cooked sausage spiced with herbs reaching my nose.

They looked… younger. Human. Just like Sergei, they lacked any of the defining features that we'd previously had integrated onto our bodies. Durga and Mithra never went through the more battle oriented modifications, no need to when they weren't warriors or generals, but instead of the young woman that Mithra would grow into…she looked no older than perhaps 13.

I… had forgotten just how small she used to be. But there was that same glint of childish joy in her eyes as she ran around, arms outstretched like wings, smile on her face as she looked at Asura.

…Had he ever smiled like that before? The most I could get out of the big lug was a grin.

But… I never saw him be so-

At peace.

Then I noticed the biggest difference.

There was no trace of his wrath in his heart. He was still an angry bastard… but it was nothing compared to the emotion that seemed to fill his being before.

Nothing compared to what I could feel stirring in my heart as I looked at the smiles on their faces.

They weren't the family that I'd had. The souls were the same… but the memories weren't there.

That meant… that I was too late.

That Mithra had died.

I didn't know if that meant that she lived a long life, managing to escape from whatever the other Generals were planning on doing to her.

Or if she had met her end at their hands.

I feel a hand grab mine. Estrella held onto my hand with her own, wearing a simple green and red dress, still defining and eye catching, but nowhere near as gaudy or glittering as her golden armor.

And she stared at the sight with a face of utter anguish and confused rage.

Was that the face that I was making right now?

"Mithra, be mindful of your surroundings dear! Make sure that you don't bump into anyone!" Durga called out to her daughter, the dark haired woman staring at what might as well be a younger version of herself with stern eyes.

Mithra slowed down, giving her a pout, her brown eyes shining with childlike mirth.

Asura, even in this new life, merely looked on in silence, his stoic expression doing nothing to dim the content smile on his face.

"I will Mom! I'm not just a little kid anymore!" Mithra announced.

Right before she bumped into a large man and fell onto the floor.

"Watch where you're going kid!" The man yells at the child, staring up at the giant like man with scared eyes.

I feel the bubbling wrath rise to the surface, both Estrella and I stepping forward-

When Asura decks him across the face, sending the man who had at least a foot on him tumbling to the floor.

"Ah, there it is." Estrella mumbles. Even if it was but a spark compared to the inferno that he once carried, I could still feel that same wrath that I felt through countless battlefields.

We watch for a few minutes, that rage that had been rising to the surface being replaced by the sorrow. I much preferred it when I was angry.

Everything hurt a lot less when you couldn't think straight.

We watch as Asura lets the man go, the giant ugly man wandering away, rubbing the forming bruises on his face.

"I want to go over there." Estrella says softly.

"I do too."

"But we can't. Can we?" Estrella asks softly.

"Oh yes, because we can just go up and say, 'Hey, you're my family that I was too weak to save reincarnated into this life, sorry!'" I barely manage to keep my voice from hitching and raising into a hate filled scream.

She doesn't wince or react. She just… stands there. Staring at the family that was ours… and yet also wasn't.

I can't even look at them anymore.

Just… another instance that a life I lived ended in failure.

Then we saw someone.

Someone that made the both of us growl and snarl, purple and yellow light gathering in both of our eyes.

Walking through the street, right at the family of three, was Yasha.

That smug handsome prick was missing the rocky skin and exhaust slits, along the fine robes and silver adornments on his face and chest.

Instead, he looked like a bodybuilder male model that wore clothes just tight enough so that every muscle was accentuated. He even wore stylish glasses on annoyed face as his eyes landed on Asura.

My reincarnated brother held the exact same expression on his face when their eyes met.

Of course being born again in different lives didn't do anything to make them friendly with each other.

It was almost funny enough to make me stop from grasping Estrella's hand in my own while she shifted back into her shikai state.

He said something to Asura, who proceeded to yell something back while Mithra ran into her traitorous uncle's arms, tiny arms holding on as her feet kicked her in the air when he lifted her up into the ground, a content smile on his face.

Another expression that I had never seen in my previous life. He'd always been a downer whereas Asura and I tended to become raging lunatics in the field of battle.

Like the family, I didn't detect anywhere the same amount of melancholy that was once there.

Well. Turns out I was right.

It did take him dying to cheer him up.

Almost made me feel bad as I brandished my blade higher, light beginning to gather from the sun on high.

I step forward, ignoring the gasping crowd, staring right at Yasha as he turned to look at me.

I ignore the fear on his face… but I do pause when he puts the Mithra on the floor, and puts himself in front of her.

Then I look at her eyes.

And see the fear, feel her fear, as she stares at me like I was some sort of monster coming to take her family away.

She… wasn't wrong in that.

Another man steps in front of them, Asura, that white haired idiot, staring at me with that familiar rage, fists held in front of him as if he was going to be able to fight me off.

While he might not be my Asura anymore… he still held that same look in his eyes.

The one that said even if he was going down, he would come back from the grave just to put you in his place.

Maybe he somehow figured out how to do that in his 'first' life.

Stranger things have happened in the various worlds that defy the reality I knew in my first life.

I lower my blade, Estrella's blades of light dimming back into the black of obsidian, the feathered serpent engraved into the wood remaining a simple carving.

They weren't my family anymore.

And he wasn't the man that I wanted to kill.

He was long dead.

Estrella disappears back into my soul, the entire city going crazy around me, staring with wide scared eyes, the sound of sirens and yelling getting louder with every passing second.

I raise my hands, ignoring the flinch and growl from both Asura and Yasha, and clasp them together in front of me, while I bow.

It's the least that I can do after I failed them once.

"I'm sorry to disturb you."

A tear appears behind me, and I step back, keeping eye contact with the soul of my brother, deciding at the last minute to look towards the little girl that had been my only rock to this world.

Instead of fear, she looked at me with… sadness.

And I had to bite my tongue from sobbing.

I wasn't going to let the last she saw of me as a stoic woman.

I focus on the joy and peace that I felt when I watched her grow up. I focus on just how proud I had been when she'd finally made it into the Priesthood, all while shoving that worry down.

I give her a smile, one as real as I can manage, before I step through and close the tear, whispering a final…

"Goodbye."

Pass it over." Estrella passes me the bottle of moonshine that I kept in my little pocket space, wiping the alcohol that had dribbled on her lip.

I down the rest of the bottle, my throat having gone numb at least a bottle ago, staring out at the city before us.

It was New York, New York. Just not mine.

It wasn't Hell Salem's Lot either.

No, this was a different world, one that felt… darker. Bleaker.

Like it was just slowly consuming itself in darkness, now barely more than a festering corpse waiting for the end to come.

I felt a… connection here. One that could jump off a bridge for all that I cared.

The demon inside was nothing more than a howling screech behind the wall that Gaia had built around my soul.

Nothing the Demon did could compare to what I was feeling right now.

"Pleeaz tel me that ya got sum morrr." Estrella slurred from her spot on the ridge.

"Yeah." I slur back, picking a bottle out of thin air, before popping the cork and downing a good long chug.

We stare over the night sky, watching the various city streets with apathy.

Just… trying not to feel so much.

"What the hel' wer' we thinkin? That everything would just be fin' if we showd' up?" I mumbled to myself as I passed the bottle back to Estrella.

The golden eyed Zanpakuto greedily downed more of the alcohol while shrugging her shoulders. "Eveyrthin that we lived 'fore turnz to shit." She mumbled out.

Ha. Isn't that the truth.

I feel the forge connect again.

"Fuck off." I whisper to myself, ignoring the knowledge of needlework and knowledge of creating the simplest of clothing. Furs, string, handmade cloth and the like.

Bah.

I take another swig, closing my eyes and enjoying the burn of the magical moonshine.

Only to growl in irritation as the sound of a wounded howl tore through the night sky.

It was far, at least a few blocks away, and should have been drowned out by the sounds of the city. But the sheer emotion behind it seemed to call to the both of us, as my twin and I turned oure heads toward the source.

"We shouldn'' ge' involve." Estrella mumbled.

"Yeah." I say as I get up, blinking as the world seemed to tilt and whirl around me.

"Urgh." Estrella mumbles as she rises to her feet, stumbling about, having to grab onto me so she didn't fall off the edge.

"Carefu' bitch I don' wanna fall!" Didn't want to land and hit some poor sucker down there on the pavement. I'd be fine. They wouldn't.

"Shu' up." She growls back, staring out into the city. "Wherz it at?"

I blink and focus outward, humming, ignoring the spinning and the whirling, drowning out the bright lights amidst the shadows that were so inviting and enticing.

Instead, I focus outward. I knew that growl. I knew that howl.

A little nugget of memory from the Demon that appeared at the forefront of my mind the moment that I heard it.

So, all I had to do was follow the Rage.

And it shone like a beacon amidst the dreariness and bleakness of the world of dark around me.

"There" I point forward, forcing the alcohol slowly out of my system, reducing the complete slosh into a light buzz accompanied by a sharp headache.

Hangover's, the one thing I couldn't really get rid of.

Or maybe I could.

My body stopped being… human a long time ago. I could probably do it if I really wanted to.

The flight through the night was short, quicker than most people could think.

It was a carnage filled slaughterhouse in that alley.

Thankfully, it didn't seem like humans were the victims. Oh, they looked it, but there was a… corruption here. Something vile, wicked and twisted that stank of death and ruin in a way that made my skin crawl. At the back of my head, I could feel Gaia recoil at the very notion.

I could tell that on the surface level they looked human.

But that's as far as it went. Deeper, on a plane that none could see, they were twisted and deformed.

Faceless flesh, the only thing besides their mouth and nose being a symbol inscribed in the center, scabbed over scars shining with a malice that threatened to kill and destroy, claws and carapaces that should have never been taken by human forms, the keratin stinking of a poison that promised death on a spiritual level.

And that wasn't where the atrocities ended.

All around the alleyway, former humans were littered on the floor, each one reeking of a consumption that had eaten what made them human from within, whatever was left of their souls being nothing more than fuel for the spirits that slowly breathed their last gasp of cursed air.

They weren't all dead, though.

There were still plenty living. Enough abominations left to make me want to hurl, as deformed bodies and corrupted screaming souls moved at the command of the banes that nested themselves within the flesh.

Perhaps they were truly victims of the malevolent spirits. Perhaps they were simply people that had been unlucky in their choices.

Or maybe they were just fucking idiots that thought making a deal with an evil spirit would end well.

"Well, I'll be damned." Estrella mutters from next to me, golden eyes focused on the real thing that had brought us here.

Or rather, the person.

They were tall, taller than I was, easily dwarfing both of our sizes' with rippling muscle and corded flesh that pulsed and flexed with monstrous rage that threatened to drown out the very stars around us.

"It's kinda cute, honestly." I said with a chuckle as I stared down. The rage was strong, I would give him that, but it was… like a drop compared to the ocean I had to fight against just a few hours ago.

"I thought we weren't going to think about it?" Estrella asked with a grumble.

"We both know that the more we try not to, the more we will." She growls deep in her throat as we watched the massive form of molded muscle, fur, claws and fangs tore through the creatures trying to kill it, hateful eyes of gold lost in their rage, his mind probably gone for the moment.

"First one you think?" I asked Estrella.

She nodded. "Has to be. Far too… wild to be something that he unleashed on purpose. It's… untamed. Inexperienced compared to what it would be if he simply lost himself to the Rage."

Wonderful. A brand-new wolf going through his first shift.

Question was, did he know what he was? And did any of the Tribes know about him?

They were still a mystery to me, something that I had only heard whispers of. Or at least, the Demon that rested within.

Damn thing was good for something at least.

I watched as more of the deformities fell, faceless blobs with fleshy spider like legs, slithering creatures with more arms than was necessary, many eyes at the elbows glaring with hatred going dull as claws ripped it to shreds. Even as that one fell, a thing that had the horns of a bull and a maw of crooked sharpened teeth that glinted in the moonlight clamped its jaws around her shoulder, the werewolf roaring with even more rage, arms clawing at the thing's face.

The werewolf was… not doing so hot…

It wasn't for the bewildered frenzy, he would probably be prone on the ground.. Bite marks, no doubt full of poison, puncture wounds, large bloody gashes that looked to be made by shoddy blades marred the Werwolf's white speckled mahogany fur, larger flecks of white shining brightly along his arms and legs, with a large tuft gleaming proudly on her chest, at least, the parts that weren't currently covered in blood.to

Even as his powerful limbs shredded and tore, even while his jaws crushed and spat out a human centipedes head out. Through the carnage and ferocity, I could see his waning of strength by the shaking of his limbs and drooping of his head.

"So… how we doing this?" Estrella asked.

"However you want." She smiled our smile, her sharpened fangs glittering in the twilight, like deadly pearls fashioned into daggers.

"Goody."

With that, we both jumped, and landed in the center of the alleyway, the inhabitants all turning to face us, the closest bane controlled humans screeching with hate.

One tries to charge at us, only for Estrella to grab the charging humanoid by its head and throw it into a wall with a splat.

Another, this one having been hanging on the fire escape while it fired potshots at the Werewolf tried to do the same to me.

I flicked a finger, redirecting the bullet to hit the horned one that was trying to take a bite of wolf shoulder. I click my tongue when all it merely does is tear a horn off, causing it to screech.

"Guess my math was off." I muttered, shifting the center of my hand into a mechanical hole, the center shining with white light as a high-pitched whine echoed across the city that never slept.

I don't watch as I blast the gun toting one's head off, Embodying a trio of shining blades singing through the air, tearing and slicing their way through corrupted flesh in a dance of moonlit crystallized alloys.

Estrella was being more… pugilistic in her efforts.

She could use my magic, at least, I was pretty sure that she could, but instead, she settled with beating anything that tried to bite her or hit her with a flurry of blows that cracked the air and shattered wind around us.

It was faster than either of us would have liked it, these things were… fairly weak.

Or was I just that strong? Probably a mix of both.

Leaving the only things living in the alley Estrella, the Werewolf and I.

He charged at us, howl primed into the air, eyes lost in the madness of rage and instinct as he left indentations in the ground.

He reaches me, raising a steel claw above his head, blank empty eyes staring at me with enough hatred to light the entire city star bright.

I block the incoming claw with Without Question, the Stand staring at the Werewolf with sad eyes.

I take in a breath, shoving my emotions down, pulling on memories of… happier times.

The feeling of greenery flashing through my eyes, the wind pulling on my red hair as I breathed in forest filled air instead of heat waved wind.

The warmth every time that I could see Taylor smile like a kid again, the way that my heart brightened at the satisfied smile on Krunter's face when he finished cooking up a new recipe.

I allow my joy and love drift through the connection that I made with the man. Even if I couldn't feel it as strongly as I wanted to right now, the hurt was still there, waiting beneath the surface. Regardless, it was still enough to abate the Rage.

I watched as the Wolf shrunk muscle and fur abating, leaving a thin young boy standing in the alleyway, naked as the day he was born, blinking the fog from his mind, his wounds open to the world.

A large blanket appears in the air, fuzzy green and soft, which drifts around the short boy's shoulders, converging on his already healing injuries as the fog seems to drift away from his eyes, the glitter of magic helping accelerate the mending of his injuries from my fingers.

"What was that?" He asked in a horrified whisper, his soft slightly rounded features staring up at me, yellow flicked green eyes filled with terror and barely contained rage.

"Oh great. We got one that doesn't know anything." Estrella muttered behind me, kicking a particularly… offensive corpse on the floor. It squelched and burst at the infusion of light.

"It was his first change Estrella, don't be such a bitch." She waves it off while rubbing the drowsiness from her eyes, the stench hitting my nose as the buzz around my head finally wore off.

Oh great, here's the rest of the hangover.

"What just happened?" The teen boy asked, fear and panic beginning to overtake his mind, with the rage just beginning to simmer beneath the surface.

Ah, none of that now.

Without Question touches his shoulder again, the young man (he couldn't be much older than fifteen) letting him feel what I feel. Calming warmth with an undercurrent of sorrow.

I couldn't help letting that part through.

After all Without Question, it was how I felt. No matter how much I just wanted to bundle it up and throw it away.

He blinks up at me, raven locks dirty with grease and dirt flowing with the blow of the breeze.

Even without the blood and gore that he was caked in, the child was completely filthy. Not a single piece of skin that wasn't marred with the dirt and grime of having lived out in the streets.

I recognized the signs, along with the smell that clung to him.

How couldn't I, when that had been me at one point?

"Don't we have enough strays?" Estrella muttered low enough so that only I could hear her.

The words were harsh, but her heart wasn't in them.

"Hush you." I whisper back to her.

He tightens the blanket around his shoulders, eyes focused downward, refusing to look me in the eyes, embarrassment and confusion filling him with equal measure.

"I think that before I answer any questions, you should put some clothes on, and we can get you some food. Is that alright with you?" I asked.

He wanted to refuse. I could feel that urge, that need to wish to say no. The cynical side of him no doubt trying to dissuade him from taking the helping hand, seeing only the unknown in front of him, the mind creating the monsters and callousness that would usually come with such things.

Eventually, the desperation and confusion overcame the fear, hunger taking its toll.

Good. Meant that he probably didn't eat any of those things during him frenzy.

"What's your name?" I ask the boy, forming some clothes in the air through magic. Nothing too fancy, just a nice blue T-shirt, fletched with splashes of black and grey, accompanied by baggy comfortable jeans.

"Steven." He didn't give me a last name. Hmm… a runaway.

Sigh. What the hell is with my luck and finding more strays? I asked myself as I stared up at the pitch black sky, the feeling of the world being wrong abating for just that one moment.

Mark

There wasn't much more that he thought could go wrong with his life.

Not after all the shit he had seen living in New York. Not after seeing something drink another person dry of their blood, and the terror that came with having to run as far and as fast as he could.

The thing… it didn't look human. It had been human shaped, but its face had been… twisted into something that haunted nightmares, a monster grotesque in its deformation of human features, with sharpened ears and fangs instead of teeth.

It was like… that night so many years ago. The last time that he had seen his parents before that woman had taken them away.

He'd thought that he'd only imagined seeing the fangs, better than believing that she was something other than human.

Maybe that was the only reason that he was still alive up to right now.

Then the night had gotten worse.

As things even worse than the blood sucker had been. Twisted flesh and monsters made manifest that just felt wrong. Corrupted and simply foul that sent his skin crawling, and made him angry for some reason.

It was an anger that was familiar and yet so different. More intense than any amount of rage that he had ever felt.

Like his whole world was nothing but the rage that pushed him to rend the meat from their bones and crush the hardened calcium with his teeth.

Then he had changed and everything had gone fuzzy and fragmented. He remembered pain, teeth, rage, blood the taste of soiled iron in his mouth. A putrid, disgusting substance made him want to cut his own tongue out.

Anything that would make the taste go away!

The feeling of… calm. Of calming love with painful sorrow had been the wake-up slap that he needed.

Without it, he'd probably be a rotting corpse.

Or worse, taken away by whatever those things had been.

He sat down in the booth, the twin women having given him clothes and a basin to wash his face with as they led him through the noise filled streets with a guiding hand.

The smart thing would have been to take off running the moment that he'd regained his wits.

Or he could have gone with the free meal.

His stomach had rumbled at that thought.

So he sat here, lifting the bowl of soup to his mouth and slurping it with all the might that his body could give him, uncaring of the way that some of the people looked at him. He didn't even care that the twin women stared at him with open amusement. Never mind that they both could probably kill him without a second thought.

He didn't know what he'd turned into, but he knew that he was struggling against those things that had crawled out of the walls and shadows.

The two of them had beat them and sliced them to pieces without a second thought. No struggle, no fight, they had simply arrived, without a sound, and in the next five seconds the monsters were dead.

For some reason… he had a feeling that he'd tried to kill them too. It was like a forgotten memory that itched at the back of his head, wrestling and wriggling in the back of his skull.

It made him angry. Even the smooth, salty tanginess of the tomato soup wasn't enough to make that constant anger that buzzed around his head go away.

"Slow down kid, no reason to get those clothes dirty this fast." The brisker one said, passing him a napkin that he quickly used to wipe his mouth and chin, eyes focused down on the table in embarrassment.

"Sorry." He mumbled out, afraid of looking at the white and pink (maybe they were some of those weird goths? But it was white instead of black), their eyes a piercing blue that felt like staring into pools of sapphires. "I just-" He cuts himself off, glancing up at the both of them before averting his gaze.

He doesn't notice the way that both of them look at him with an understanding gaze. Long-lost pain flashing through their eyes.

"It's completely fine. I imagine that it's hard to get a meal out here." The calm one wearing the blue suit says while glancing out the window, placing a hand underneath her chin.

Not knowing what to do, he grabs the glass of water - with Ice!- and chugs it down, appreciating the cool refreshment that he hadn't felt in over a year

Once again, he doesn't notice the water dribbling off his chin, though this time the two women keep their silence.

Eventually, he finished of things to eat and drink, leaving him in the uncomfortable position of looking back at the two of them.

There was something… more about them that caused the new part of him to… well even it didn't know what it wanted to do.

Which did beg the question.

"What happened?" He asked again, hoping beyond hope that they knew.

The one wearing the blue suit leans back in her seat with a sigh. "Honestly not much of an expert, only know bits and pieces honestly, but you're a Werewolf. Or a Garou, as they happen to call themselves."

"You're joking, right?" The words tasted like sweet nothing in his mouth. As if it was trying to entice him into a belief that he didn't have.

"We both know that I'm not." She said softly, looking at him with soft, if piercing eyes. Seeing past his gravitas and attempts at trying to deflect. "The memories might be fuzzy, I' know that they usually are in the first Frenzy, but I know that the glimpses are there in your head. Even while the human side of your brain tries to say no."

Was it getting hot in here? He reaches for the glass, taking another swig, not remembering that it had been empty just a moment ago.

The taste of rancid iron in his fangs, his muscles tensed and bulging as they ripped the fleshy blob to pieces with his talons, the moon shone high up above the world, the only pure thing glittering amidst the horror that was the world. It shone with a brilliance that he had never seen before, anchoring what part of him could still think to the violence and tide that surrounded him, the crescent moon hanging there like a guillotine waiting to fall.

The last bit of water in the glass struggles to flow down his throat, the inside feeling like it was constricting his measures to breath.

He looks to the side, afraid that any of the other patrons would hear, watching the very hairs of the woman that worked behind the counter set a new pot of coffee, the fragrance of the cheap brand wafting its way into his nose.

Mark grunts at the sensation. "Everything feels too much, doesn't it?" The wilder of the two said, the one wearing a green and brown dress, golden bracelets jingling on her wrists while the stylized suns on her earrings swirled in place.

"How-" He begins to ask.

"Because it's how we feel every now and then, when control slips at least." The suited one says softly while she leaned back. "Your senses are stronger than before, that means that you need to get used to the changes and acclimate to them as the new normal. At least learn to ignore it all."

"Are you werewolves too?" A part of him knew what the answer was going to be.

"Nah, haven't got that one yet." What the hell did that mean? "Think of us as… two hot babes trying to get over a bad break."

Her twin sighs, rubbing her eyes with her hands, as if she would like nothing more than go to sleep right now.

"We have some… secondhand knowledge about werewolves. Never actually spoke much to any that knew much about it."

"Given that they almost always tried killing us the moment they saw us, it's no surprise there." The gruff one, Estrella, said as she took a sip of her coffee.

Mark was suddenly having the feeling that maybe he should leave as fast as he could.

Mia sighs again. She did that a lot. Like she was just… tired. "You know that saying like that is just going to put him on edge."

"It's the truth, isn't it?" Estrella said with a dangerous glint in her eyes.

"Yes, but without the nuance of why they were doing that."

"Well… why did they?" Mark, managing to find his voice. Only for it to die as they both looked at him, eyes seeming to flash to crimson and gold before returning back into their blue. A trick of the light maybe

"Because at the time, I was something that drove them mad." Mia said as if she was commenting that the sky was blue.

"... So you're just going to dodge the question?" Mark asked before he could rethink it.

Instead of giving him that look of disapproval that he had gotten used when his mouth worked faster than his brain… she laughed. "I barely know you kid! Sure, I don't mind giving you a helping hand, and answering anything that I know about your situation. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to give you my life story right off the bat. Would you tell me everything about you right off the bat if I asked?"

He scoffs. "What's there to ask? I'm just a street rat that hasn't died yet, even though I should have." Even though everyone that he loved was.

"Everyone is deeper than a shallow pool. Even the ones that seem to be the simplest puzzle to piece together."

"Do you normally pull fortune cookie crap out of your ass?" Mark asks, not keeping the irritation from his voice.

"Ha! Not normally, but I think it fits here, don't you think? Just because you live out on the streets doesn't mean that there isn't a whole world hidden behind those eyes of yours." He didn't know if that was a compliment or an insult. Given the warmth that he could… feel from her, he was maybe leaning on the latter.

"How are you doing that?" He gestured around himself vaguely. "That… feeling crap."

"With her." She gestured towards her left, where a rainbow woman with a star on her forehead smiled at him as she gently touched his shoulder, like a mother would. He couldn't help the way that his rage rumbles at that before being drowned out by the warm sad tinged emotions. "She is… something that is unique to me. Her name is Without Question. She lets me connect two people and share their emotions between them. What you're feeling is what I am."

"Isn't that an invasion of privacy?" He asked.

"Yes, but I think that we would both prefer that over you suddenly turning into a furry rage machine again." He… couldn't really argue with that.

"What… is that? I've been angry before, but not… like that." Never like the slightest 'insult' could set him off at any moment. Like the slightest bit of teasing was enough to send him into a bloodthirsty frenzy across the city.

"That is what all Werewolves have. It's the Rage that helps make them such good warriors. After all, Rage is a hell of an anesthetic. Trust me." The sadness rose to the forefront for a second before falling back beneath the warmth and love.

"Who… are you thinking about? It feels like… you're thinking about someone else that isn't me."

A smile wraps around both of the women's faces. "My friends and family. Good people that make… everything worth it."

"That… sounds nice." They sit there in silence for a few moments, him trying to gather his thoughts, while the women merely sipped from their coffee.

Until eventually he managed to find his voice again. "So… who would I have to go to for answers to… what I am?"

"I have no idea. As we said, we didn't exactly have an amicable relationship with the Werewolves that we encountered due to our… circumstances at the time." Mia finished her cup of coffee while looking up at the ceiling. Lost in thought.

Then her eyes go glassy, as if she was seeing something beyond the mere cheap metal and fiberglass above it.

With perturbed expressions, Estrella and Mia look at each other, a silent conversation going on between the both of them, their eyes darting back and forth while their bodies remained still.

And Mark just sat there like a dumbass watching a tennis match.

Eventually, their focus returns to him, and he feels like the rabbit caught between two hawks.

"We can't give you many answers… but we can help you introduce you to someone that can help you with your… condition." Estrella said.

"There is one caveat, though. You have to come with us. And… it might be for good. As in, you can't come back to live here. Visiting would still be an option, but the life you live isn't going to be here anymore." Those words… weren't what he was expecting.

"Oh, is that all? I thought that you might want my soul or my balls along with that." He doesn't try to push the anger away this time, and he notices that the woman doesn't do that thing again.

No, the Rage feels right at home in his heart, pumping his blood through his body faster by the second, the newfound strength flooding his body like renewed fire in his veins.

"Do you really have anything that is worth sticking around?" Estrella asks, the gold coming back into her eyes, slits staring into his own yellow flicked yes, boring into his very soul. "Don't try to lie to either of us, I'll know if you're lying."

He wanted to lie anyways. Who the fuck were they to ask him that?

Who the fuck were they to ask him to just… leave everything behind?

Them being right only served to make him angry again. The rage seeming to fill every ounce of blood that pumped through his heart.

He hears his bones crack as his hands curl into fists, a snarl forming on his lips. And why did his mouth feel so itchy? Like his teeth wanted to pop out of their sockets.

The rainbow woman appears again, stretching her hand, like… a mother would for a child.

He doesn't meet it, but he allows her to touch his shoulder, as the rage was numbed again. It was still there, pacing back and forth like the wolf that he hid inside, but it remained silent for the moment.

"Thanks." He said with a shaky breath. "Is there any way that I can control whatever this is?"

They both ponder him for a moment, the sounding of honking horns and constant moving on the outside the only noise in his ears.

"I can think of a few things that can help. But at the end of the day, self-control is something that's going to be up to you to learn. This Rage that you feel… it's a part of you now. Just as the Wolf is. Not something that you can ignore and bottle away." The sinking feeling in his gut only gets worse. "That's why we want you to meet someone that can help you. Unfortunately, this means that you might never be able to come back."

Mark looks out the window, staring at the constant movement and apathy that the world always had for him. He thought of the others though… the other kids that protected him, and he protected in turn.

When they could.

Sometimes they couldn't run from the cops fast enough, or… they simply didn't turn up again at their usual meeting spots. It was… a rarity when they ever managed to find out what happened to them.

Last one that he knew was… whacked, had been Tracy a year ago. Poor dude saw something that he shouldn't have, and couldn't keep his mouth shut.

Something that Mark and the rest learned quickly.

Every instinct that he learned over his years on the street was telling him to just walk away and never see these two chicks ever again. It was the smart move to make, the intelligent one that helped keep his skinny ass alive all these years.

It screamed as he took in a sigh and said, "Fine. So, where we going?"

"Oh, just a different universe." Estrella said with a smile as Mia placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Wha-" Like that, all three of them disappear from the face of the world, a nice stack of cash that Glinda, a mother of four that had begun working at the diner three years ago as her night job when bills had become too much for her. Now, this diner gig was the only reason why she could put food on the table for her little ones at home.

She stares at the face of Benjamin Franklin greet her no matter how many times she rubbed her eyes.

The mother was so focused on this, that she didn't notice the two men wearing sunglasses and crisp black suits, wired earpieces disappearing into their neck collars, their faces blank and forgettable that they could simply fade into the background.

They share a glance, a frown on both their faces as they reviewed the footage that fed through their glasses. The footage of a wolf like creature being attacked by bio creations that warped the very world around them.

Reality deviants that needed to be stopped and observed. The corpses had already been secured and settled away. All that was left was the Wolf creature, and the two women that sent their radars and sensors haywire.

Just like other reality deviants from extra planar realities.

"No sign of them." One of them says, his short cropped red hair the only defining feature of his that would be remembered by Glinda that day.

"No… we're going to have to quarantine this area. Ensure that nothing untoward or damaging was left behind."

Glinda put the money away into her pockets, not even trying to keep the smile off her face as she turns around to an empty doorway.

"Weird. Could have sworn that I heard something." She mumbled to herself as she picked up the dirty dishes and took them to the back.

No reason why she couldn't finish her shift, right?

Spoiler: Perks

The voices and nightmares subside with every night.

Every night where I am forced to debase myself as some street urchin, begging for the barest scraps the humans deem to be beneath them.

An existence that was below me, who helped shape the very earth and bring life to the seas so many millennia ago.

Yet… there are moments when I find myself… at peace.

The quiet minutes of the night where the other refuse and lost of society gather in the night, at an abandoned building that had once belonged to a group by the name of Pentex, before those… wolf things had torn their way through, polluting the building away from the corrupted creatures that tasted of death and decay.

Whatever they are, they are of no concern to me.

I want nothing to do with the politics or the machinations that God may have left behind in his crumbling world.

Perhaps it's more this… Mia infecting me, but I just… want peace. I wish to be left alone, I want me and mine to prosper and live peaceful lives.

Thievery or manipulation of other mortals would be something laughably easy, a path writ in gold and words.

Yet, I can't find it in me to play the games that first come to mind.

More of that damnable woman that has persisted in my thoughts.

Perhaps it is the last remnants of her soul clinging to her old body.

Perhaps it's just me clinging to the one good thing that managed to survive the corruption and hell of the abyss.

Or maybe I just want to forget those memories.

Those infinite years of… nothing. Of being forbidden from the Creation that had been so inherent in my being.

And this woman's memories and bonds were the only things that kept me from being the Demon that God created instead of the Elohim I had once been.

So, I will stay here, in this rotted, old, decrepit building that is little more than a shelter for the refuse and runaways of the world.

I will remain huddled by the fires we manage to light with old newspapers and a lighter that we managed to find in the dumpster, eating through the meals that we managed to salvage together that we barely manage to scarf down.

Anything is better than the Hell that was the Abyss.

Even if it turns me into nothing but a human.

"Really Mia? Another one?" Judith asked Mia, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed as Estrella hid back into her sword form like the coward that she was.

The kid that she'd brought along (claimed his name was Steven, but Judith could hear the lie in his voice) was currently standing very still as Gaia circled around him. Her molten eyes would sometimes take a distant look, like she was looking at something that none of them could see, a frown on her lips the entire time.

Judith thinks that this is the longest that she has ever seen Gaia frown that much. Most of the time she had this smirk on her face like she knew every answer on the Earth.

Which… she did.

Probably made this Werewolf something new and interesting in her eyes. It was a rarity when there was something that neither Mia nor Gaia knew much about.

"Simply fascinating." Gaia mumbled as she stroked her chin and narrowed her eyes like Mia tended to do. "You are… not merely a mortal. No, there is something… spiritual about you. Something that delves beyond the mere material existence."

The kid stares at her, completely lost as to what the hell that meant.

Judith was feeling much the same, but she was used to it at this point.

There was too much shit that went on that she didn't care enough to worry about it.

"She means you're half spirit. Half something that exists on a spiritual level." Mia said, wearing a white labcoat, gloves and goggles, holding a vial of blood in her hands. "Even when I look through this, there isn't anything that different from normal human blood. At least, not on a physical level. It's when you look beneath that, that the differences become obvious."

"I thought you were a brawler? How the fuck do you know all this science crap?" Steven asked.

"Oh, you could say I've lived many different lives." Mia said with a cheeky grin while Judith rolled her eyes.

"Uhuh." Steven said unconvinced.

"Anyways, what she means, is that there is no way that you were all born… naturally. Or rather, the first one's of your kind." Mia continued on, placing the beaker into a slot on the wooden computer, the panel closing as the vial was taken into storage within the biolab. "Fortunately, thanks to the signs that we can see, it's obvious to us who made the first ones of your kind."

"And who would that be?"

"Me. Or rather, the me that exists in your world." Gaia finished with finality, a scowl marring her face as her eyes burned like magma beneath the crust. "Only the stupid bitch fucked up."

"Language." Mia tried to say, only to receive a scoff from Gaia.

"Please mother, we both know I received my mouth from you." Mia looked like she was sucking down a lemon while a lime was already going down her throat.

The sound of metal shaking in its sheath echoes through the room, and Mia slams a hand to her sword at her side.

Steven stared at it, eyes still denying what he had seen a few minutes ago.

Oh, how Judith wished she could go back to when that was the weirdest thing that went on in the world.

She'd just seen a dude eat lightning the other night, before he got into a fist fight with a guy that could bend the air around him, all while a gang of Pokemon went at it in the streets.

Everything was fucking going crazy in the world right now.

"The intention was to create protectors, when all she did was create rabid dogs." Gaia spat out with venom, sparks of light flashing across her hair that was no doubt happening somewhere on Earth. Hopefully everyone there was currently in doors, because the sparks were getting worse. "That Rage that you have is useful for enhancing bloodlust, to keep you in the fight, but that's it. It is far more of a detriment, and I would not be surprised if the Werewolves had a tendency for civil war."

The longer that Gaia went on, the more lost Steven looked, most of her words meaning little to the young man that was newly off the streets. He still needed a shower, the smell clung to him, but it was something that Judith was used to.

Something Mia was used to as well.

Probably more than she was, given the various different lifetimes.

"Before we get into that, though, I think we should get Mark here situated, don't you think?" Mia interrupted, removing her white coat, leaving her with the long-sleeved black button up that clung to her.

Judith didn't miss the way that the kid stared at her arms and such, but eh, he was a kid. Most guys at that age didn't know where their eyes looked most of the time. At least he noticed what he was doing on his own, blinking fast and averting his gaze, hoping no one saw him.

She let Mia lead him out of the room, managing to keep the smirk from her face.

It was always funny when people first met Mia. Usually the irritation with her antics hits after they get a good dose of it.

Instead of disappearing, Gaia remained in the room, one hand twirling a strand of her long curled hair, the other cupping her chin, index finger rubbing back and forth on her lower lip.

"You alright there?" Judith asked, the Earth's eyes turning to her in surprise.

"I forgot that you were there…" She said softly, frowning slightly. "My reach and sight is… more muddied here than on… well, on me. Like trying to see through new eyes that haven't adjusted quite yet."

"I'm sure that this must be a new feeling for you." Judith said, not quite keeping the snideness in her voice.

She couldn't help it, it was just part of who she was.

"Yes, it has been wonderful so far." Gaia retorted back, a playful smile on her face.

"So, what are the chances that the kid is going to be fine? It isn't like either of you have much experience with this sorta thing."

Gaia pursed her lips. "It isn't the chance of success that stays my hand, but the effect that it could have on the child. He's already going through the change, his body is tougher, stronger, gaining muscle that should not be there as he's rail thin. The effects on his mind however are a greater concern. The Rage is something that has the possibility to drown everything out. A thin straw could easily break the lock that leashes the best. And that is going to be the first thing that we fix."

"I would have thought that a Warrior race that relishes in bloodlust would be something that could come in handy." Judith says idly, stating a thought that crossed her mind.

"If you wanted a quick solution to insurmountable odds? I would agree. However, that is not what he is, or what it feels these Werewolves should be. They were created as protectors, guardians, something that would remain long-term.

"And there is no use in a sword that does not know when it needs to be sheathed. Otherwise, you're more likely to slit your own wrists rather than the enemy's throat." She proceeds to go back to rumbling. Something about not knowing how to 'get rid of STD's" and "Managing to get Leukemia again."

Whatever, Judith wasn't going to get into that.

She'd seen how Mia got when she started mumbling to herself.

No thank you.

Taking care of Claire before Krunter came by to put her to rest, the House Elf gave her the same customary bow, before leaving with the bundle of joy in his arms.

She remembered when she thought that having Claire was going to… ruin her life. No college, having to get a job, all while having to run from those Nazi fucks.

And look at her now?

All it had taken was squatting in the wrong building and meeting an airhead that had more power than she knew what to do with.

They were probably lucky they got her and not someone with a penchant for world domination. Fuck knows there are plenty of those bumbling around in soon-to-be body bags.

Now, she smiled as she stepped out into the sun, leaving the Squat complex that had been created as their 'home' on the planet and slowly growing city.

Of course, given that it was the home of their only "Living Ancestor" they made it into a manor of steel and stone that could probably outlast most buildings on Earth.

Truly, it was a marvel of architecture, with prominent pillars of rockcrete engraved in steel and technology, the images of various Pokemon dancing along the rock. And there, at the very top of the archway that led into the sturdy blocky building were the names of every Slayer that had died in the battle.

Each one was etched by Mia's hand, in English and Squat runes.

She hadn't used magic, or any other form of advanced technology.

No, Mia had grabbed a chisel and a ladder, ones that she had shaped from stone and steel with her own hands, before perching herself up there and carved away.

Judith had watched Mia create an entire spaceship in less than an hour, embodying and forging the thing in a swirl of motion, each piece connecting with precision before she infused it with magic, cables, cords, wires, gears and countless parts melding into a single complete creation.

It had been both magical and terrifying at once. Just like that, a single spaceship capable of traversing the stars and capable of laying waste to an entire fleet created with barely any effort or time.

Yet, there was none of that when Mia had carved those names in.

None of the magical marvel that Judith had long become accustomed to. No worry, or rush in what she did.

Wearing a face of intense concentration and will, she sat up there, carving away, actually getting down from the ladder and moving it by hand instead of simply willing it to move with her mind.

It took her all day before she finished.

And then she carved the names of every person that died, both their real name and their caped name, on the walls that surrounded this place.

Now, Mia stood outside, the boy Steven next to her, a small bronze telescope in his hands and on his eye as she guided his head slowly, the boy looking far cleaner and content than he had earlier.

"I don't know what the hell you have me looking for. How the shit is this going to tell me where the fuck we are?" He asked, not even trying to hide his irritation. Good. Meant he knew he was safe, or Mia was irritating him enough that he was forgetting the… weird situation that he was in.

Judith had found that she usually strayed into one or the other.

"Look, it's not my fault that you keep squirming so it gets out of view! It's a lot harder to find something in space than some might have you think! Especially given that it's daytime!" Mia chided him.

"And I think that you're just trying to play me for a sa-" His voice cuts off, mouth hanging open, with the tenseness in his body going slack.

"What did you find?" Judith asked, but she thinks that she already had an inkling.

"There is no fucking way that I'm looking at that. What the fuck did you roofie me with?" Steven asked panicked, eyes going wild, with surprise more than fury thankfully.

"I promise that what you're seeing is nothing but the truth. After all, if being able to move between realities is something that I can do, then why not this?" Mia asked with a grin, wagging her fingers around.

"Yeah, but if I'm seeing the planet all the way over there, then where the fuck are we? I don't remember there being any place that has fucking plants and midgets walking around!" His voice increases in hysterics with every word, wild eyes shifting to look at everything in sight.

"They are Squats kid. Not midgets." Mia says softly but sternly.

Steven waves his hands around, like he was trying to grab a fly buzzing in the air that he couldn't quite catch.

Judith didn't bother hiding the laugh that bubbled out of her mouth.

"They're still short."

"I would be careful when using that sort of language around them, lad! They aren't exactly folk that will let something like that pass!" Napoleon's boisterous voice rang out as he entered the compound, his ever present smile that sent butterflies in most people's stomach shining like a new light.

Too bad Juliet wasn't into weirdos like him. He did look rather nice though.

Steven stares at the tall man built like a brickhouse, his black slacks and tight crimson button-up open enough at the top to show off his scarred muscled chest.

"What's up with the jock playboy?" He asked pointing at the Heroic Spirit.

To his credit, all Napoleon did was laugh, crossing his arms while his smile widened.

"I am Napoleon lad! The man of possibilities!" Judith could practically hear the crickets chirp as silence reigned on, the Archer unabashed by his boastful introduction, staring at the young dark haired kid (who looked more and more uncomfortable with every passing second) straight into his hazel yellow flecked eyes.

"What're you starin at?" Steven eventually asked.

"An introduction lad! What kind of man just lets himself go unknown when a stranger introduces himself!" There was chiding in his voice, but that was it. Just amused chiding as the Heroic Spirit waited for the young Werewolf to introduce himself.

"...Steven." He eventually mumbles out.

Napoleon clicks his tongue, wagging a finger as he takes a step forward.

"None of that young man! Look me in the eye!" Napoleon takes his hand in his own, gripping it firmly, but not tightly, and giving it a good shake. " And shake my hand like a man! That's the only way to introduce yourself to another! Have some pride lad!"

Judith rolls her eyes as Steven looks lost, and Mia bites her lower lip to keep the laugh from escaping. Men.

"...Alright?" Steven says.

"Now, how did our dear Maître find you? I reckon it is quite the story! It almost always is."

That was not all at all wrong.

He looks at Mia, fear and worry in his eyes.

"He's a spiritual Werewolf. No infectious bite though." Mia says offhandedly while rolling a green gem in her hands, base elements of steel and gold materializing around her.

Steven makes a choking sound. "Why the fuck-!?"

"Truly?" Napoleon asks with a gleam in his eyes. "Please lad, no need to worry, now, tell me everything! I always love hearing about possibilities that I haven't seen before!"

"How are you doing?" Judith asks Mia as they stare up at the night sky, the bustle of the city quitting into a fitful slumber, the barest sounds of the occasional shuffle of footsteps echoing across the small compound.

"Worried about me?" Mia asks cheekily.

"Of course I am." Judith says honestly, daring Mia to lie, blue eyes staring into the heterochromatic orbs of crimson and blue. "I know that you left to see a niece that you had. And instead, you came back with a new Werewolf kid while stinking of shine. Talk to me."

Instead of putting on that mask that she tended to wear, Mia unsheathes Estrella and the Zanpakuto takes her 'human' form, sitting on the bench next to her wielder, both women wearing the same expression of… weariness.

"I was too late." they both answered simultaneously. "More so than I ever should have been."

And so, they tell her the story. Of finding the souls of her family that she loved, or that Kali had loved, reincarnated into a new life, the hints of this 'Mantra' nothing more than a memory that only she held.

How she almost lost herself to the rage, killing the one that had once been this Yasha into nothing but a steak on the street.

"Then I saw her. She was younger than when I had last seen her, couldn't have been close to 10, and the way she looked at me." Her voice went quite, almost a whimper. A far cry compared to the invincible woman that she tried to play out to be. Both from her and the more hot-headed Estrella. "She looked at me like I was some sort of a monster… and I realized that in that moment I was."

Judith didn't say anything.

What could she say? She didn't have Mia's empathy, didn't know exactly what Mia was feeling like she did. Didn't feel it so deeply that it might as well be her own.

A thing that was both something she envied Mia for, and was relieved that she didn't have.

Feeling everything others felt might keep her safe from the malicious intentions of other people, keep those like her parents away when her sense weren't enough.

But she wouldn't want to feel the pain and sorrow like Mia seemed to every waking moment. She at least seemed to have a better handle of it than before.

So, she just sat there, holding her best friends hand while she unloaded all the bottle emotions as tears ran down her face. Judith didn't even know when the crying had started.

"I think-" Judith finally said after a few minutes. "-that you need a vacation. Something that doesn't involve… well everything."

Mia sniffs wiping away at her tears.

"That sounds nice, but… where the hell are we going to go?"

Judith shrugs her shoulders. "We could visit Earth Aleph? Find someplace that hasn't been infected by 'crystal brain parasites' as you put it."

Mia laughs. "I might actually get some decent games again. Though, I'd be stuck with crap from 2011… I haven't watched Cowboy Bebop though."

"Didn't take you for a western fan."

"I tend to like things that will probably leave me crying by the end of it."

"Sounds masochistic."

"Yeah, sounds like us." Estrella grumbled under her breath.

Suddenly, they heard the honk of a horn. An old-timey honk from some of the older cars that still managed to run back home.

All three of them turn their heads, and find… a taxi pull up next to them.

In the middle of the lawn.

On Mars.

It was a taxi, only instead of white with black stripes and boxes, it was painted a black so dark that it almost blended with the night around them, brightly painted white stripes along the sides of the car, with laughing skulls painted above and below the stripes.

The tinted window rolls down, and Didi smiled at them, wearing a dark leather jacket over her tank top, sunglasses on her eyes, while wearing a black silver accented newsboy cap on top her head.

"Heard that you wanted to go on a vacation?" Didi asked, her white smile shining just a bit brighter under the darkness of the night.

There were so many things that could have been said then. So many questions that Judith, Mia, and Estrella had on their minds.

First one being: How the hell did she manage to get a car in here without a sound? The motor was running and Judith could hear it just fine now.

Second, how the fuck was getting in a Taxi supposed to take them anywhere?

Instead, she took a deep breath, and all three of the women say at the same time- "Ok."

I can't help but cough up blood, moving my head so that I leave the delicate time-worn pages on the desk unmarred, and untouched by my dying moments. Everything in my life had led up to this moment. Every wasted moment, and eager sacrifice, every wound and loss of blood, every precious memory that I would never see due to what was coming soon.

The guardian arm I was using as a crutch was already feeling less and less solid, my arm wobbling and shaking as I consumed every piece of paper that I could. Designs and notes on mere theories of the Divine Beasts. Mechanisms and diagrams littered the page, messy crazed notes by a neat hand, a disarray to what one might think a Princess capable of.

But I could tell. The former Lady Zelda, who was still here in this castle, was a scientist at heart. How I would have loved to have met her.

I cough out another bloody heave, the taste familiar on my tongue, even as I grab an old piece of cloth, using it to turn the page. My death would not ruin this tome of knowledge, and it would literally be the last thing that I did.

I should have known that I couldn't change the course of this world. I might have been Purah's apprentice, but I was no Hero destined for greatness. I was just some sand rat that decided to finally touch the green of grass. To see the world beyond the wastes of brown and orange, feel the breeze of the ocean instead of the winds of warmth.

Was it truly such a sin to wish that others could enjoy the breath of the wild? To build and explore this world without the looming threat of Ganon forever hanging over our heads?

Yet, I couldn't help but laugh as the book closed and I finally lost the strength to stand with the aid of the mechanical leg, falling to the floor and staring up at the ceiling with clear eyes and filled lungs.

In the end, I did what I wanted with my life, even if it ended here. I wouldn't be sad about that. But I couldn't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, what I did here would matter in the end.

I'd like to think so.

"Link, wake up soon. Please." With that, I took my last shuddering breath, and left this world behind, my loss and hope that lase thing that flickered across my spirit, diagrams, and images dancing in my barest of thoughts.

Mia

Before we left this world on Didi's 'wondrous drive by', she'd chuckled a little too hard at that, she had agreed to make one stop along the way. With a passenger in the back of the car, Soundly asleep, hands bound with numerous bonds of plasteel and whatever the fuck else I could find, enchanted with whatever spells I managed to learn from my various tomes of magic bullshit.

All this for a little girl that was barely 12. Yet she was a monster.

I'd touched her mind, her soul… and felt every good thing I'd ever felt, repulsed by the mere dip. Did I feel for the pain and loss that was nestled there, in her heart? Yes. Dear god, did I just want to weep at that. To hold this little girl tight and whisper that everything would be ok.

Then everything else had touched me. Every other piece of memory or thought, a vile, uncaring thought on another 'art' project. I had practically thrown her mind, her soul, away from mine in disgust. I know that she was capable of change, capable of perhaps becoming someone else someday.

But there would always be that in her. The piece that the smiling nothing had forged in her during her days of trauma. Over and over again until whatever good had been left of Riley Davis was either gone or twisted into something that would make her dead family weep.

I was always there for change, for the capability of turning good. But I don't know if I should in this situation. This wasn't someone who could merely be locked in a cage for the rest of time. Not with the information that roiled around in her head.

So I would give her what peace I could. Even if it meant killing her in the process.

I shivered at the thought, and threw my revulsion into the wind. Knowing that it would be a cross I would bear for the rest of my life. But I would always remember the residue of her victims. Of the emotions and hatred that had been thrown at her in the deaths of her former subjects.

I couldn't let more of those happen. Not when there was an alternative.

And there were so many out there. So many that I could enact.

But I would try to give her a life, at least one that would grow from this one.

Which is why we were parked in Los Angeles, across the street from a… bakery? There was a large sign in all black, with stylized curved words reading "Baking Blazing" flames of blue drawn on the 'I's'.

It was sunny out, with a dryness that was… just a little familiar. Not quite the same as Texas, but far different from the feeling of Brockton Bay.

"Seriously?" I asked Didi incredulously, while Judith stared up at the sign, baby Claire giggling and reaching up for… just about everything in sight, her eyes almost sparkling as a Rufflet waved at the baby in adoration.

God there were so many of them now.

"He found a hobby. And his wife thought it was cute." Didi said with a smile, the black taxi hat still on her head as she hung her arm out the window. "He's actually been making quite the killing with sales."

"Are the puns really necessary?" Judith asked with a raised eyebrow, her box weapon on her hip while the ring sparkling sapphire on her finger.

"Why, they are always necessary! They give me life." Brilliant white teeth shined in the Los Angeles sun as we crossed the street and walked into the packed bakery.

It was… cheerier than I was expecting? Oh, sure there were a couple of black skulls here and there, please let them be fake, but there was far more wood fashioned into wonderful chairs and benches, and plants everywhere. From lovely lilies, all the way to a baby palm tree over on the corner, with warm browns and auburn painted on the walls.

It managed to work? Somehow?

No brain, now was not the time to take notes.

Then the smell, oh god the smell, hit me. The wonderful smell of baked bread, hints of bitterness and wonderful sweetness of vanilla, chocolate, nutmeg, and so many other ingredients mixing into a wonderful breadbasket of potential sugary delight.

"I wasn't expecting this." I say as I turn to Judit- where'd she go?

"I'll take two of those, please." Judith said from the front of the line, pointing down at two curved loafs, little chocolate chips shining like darkened garnets.

"Hey, at least get me some too!" I whined from the back as the bored clerk, a drop-dead gorgeous tall woman, long locks of blue tied behind her head, a bandana over her head and little holes on her nose and ears that spoke of piercings, stared at me with wide blue eyes that shifted to gold while one hand madly pressed something under the table.

Then something else hit my nose as I heard a distant door at the back open, steady footsteps approaching closer by the second. It smelled… of old earth and candles, with just a hint of burnt weed smoke.

The doors open, and a tall thin pale man stared at me not with fear, but with bored apathy. As if he was too damn tired to care to be irritated. Dark brown ringed eyes stared at me above sharpened high cheekbones, a thin pointed nose raised as he actually had to look up at me, and locks of short blue hair finely combed up. Of course, he wore dark clothing and a black skull necklace on his neck, but I was not expecting the lit doobie on his lips as he puffed in and held his breath as he approached me.

He let out a stream of smoke as he got near me, the smoke, and smell, somehow disappearing as he did so at the annoyed look that Judith gave him.

"I didn't do it." His voice wasn't as high as I was expecting, nor was it a timber of low, but a nice middling of baritone.

I blink at him in surprise. "Didn't do what?"

It was his turn to be surprised, one blue eyebrow raising as he takes another puff. "I thought that you came because someone blamed me for something. Again. People tend to do that to me."

Then I remembered how much people tended to paint Hades as a villain, mainly due to his connection to the underworld. Who else to paint as a Satan figure to hate? Not the queen bitch who needed a good stab or two for torturing her rapist husband's bastards instead of the prick.

Hm, I had a feeling I was going to have to pay them a visit.

"I'm not here to blame you for anything." I promised him with a smile on my face, the man nodding once as he smoked again. When he pulled it out of his mouth, he offered it to me.

"Would it even do anything for me? Hell, is it doing anything for you?" I asked as I stared at the lit cigarette.

"My wife grows it, and it is absolutely wonderful." The god of the underworld proceeds to grab a nearby pastry and pop it into his mouth with a satisfied hum.

Part of me wanted to just take it and blaze for a little while, but I was here for a reason, not to get high. "Is there a chance that we could talk? In private?"

That got his attention, the blunt freezing just a few centimeters from his lips. "Oh, this'll be interesting."

With a sleepy look around, he clears his throat. "I'm sorry everyone, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave. As recompense, please take one of our coupons, promise to make it up to you next time."

There were some groans and sounds of irritation, but soon the crowd of people were out the door, most of them barely sparing a glance towards me or the god standing in front of me. The moment the last person walked out the door, the woman at the counter practically slumps on the register, a long loud groan escaping from her lips.

"Finally, they're all gone." A very husky, and appreciated, voice whimpered out.

"I know that it's a departure from torturing damned souls, but I think that this has been good for you, Megaera."

My hand twitched as one of the Furies stood up and bowed. "It is as you say, Lord Hades."

The blue haired god merely hummed and gestured towards the door. "Why don't you go out? See the rest of the world. Isn't like we have much to do."

Megeara looked at the sunny door with an apprehensive expression, as if terrified of what lay outside that small pane of wood and glass, before giving a resolute nod, and crossing the shop, her clothing shifting from welcoming orange and blue to deep purples and blacks, golden and silver piercings appearing on her face and ears.

"You make one of the three Furies man the register." I intone, not a question, just an observation that made me wonder if some of the fume managed to make it to my brain. Judith just took a seat, eating one of her pastries with a happy smile and closed eyes, Claire staring up at Hades with wide eyes.

The god of the dead just stared down at her and inched away, as if she was infected and highly contagious.

I couldn't help the chuckle that came out of my throat. "What, scared of a baby?"

"I don't see live ones much." Is all he says, and a chill blew through the room, Judith wrapping her arms tightly around her child, the blue flame of Rain billowing into life.

The god of the dead waves his hands. "Contrary to the stories, I don't want everyone to die. Too much work, and I don't have the infrastructure for it. Especially not with… everything going on."

That… was far more problematic than I thought it was going to be.

"What does that mean?" Glowing blue eyes flicker towards me with a calculating gaze, his fingers rolling the little corn that was left of his cigarette before he pops it into his mouth and swallows it whole.

"Nothing that you wished to be involved. You are of the living. Focus on that. The dead should remain my, and those that share my realm's, focus." Were the only words that he said.

And I wanted to argue. I did.

But I knew that he was right. I had enough work to do just with those that were alive.

Roping myself into even more work wasn't something that I should.

Besides, I did come here for a reason.

"I want a favor."

That caused him to laugh. Not hard, but a nice chuckle as he grabbed some more sweets from behind the counter, throwing a nice cinnamon sugar donut my way while he munched on a bagel. "Who would have thought that I would be the one for you to come to? Most people tend to avoid me for… fairly obvious reasons."

"It's because of those reasons that I came to you instead of them." I said resolutely, which caused him to tilt his head at me.

"Oh? Truly?" I nodded.

"You don't need anything. Or really want anything." I said simply, gesturing towards the shop. "If anything, of all the gods, you're the one that tends to mind his own business the most."

Now he actually was laughing, on the floor, shoulders shaking as he fished out another blunt, from somewhere, lit it and took a big ol' puff. "Could I get that in writing? I want to shove it in Zeus' face."

"How 'bout I stab it into him first?" I said before I clicked my mouth shut, and the sound of thunder rolled across the skies.

I couldn't help it. I looked up with a snarl on my face. "What bitch!? Problem!?"

Thunder boomed again for a moment before dissipating into silence.

"I'm tempted to just give you whatever you want just for that." He managed to wheeze out between breaths, the lit cig barely hanging off his fingers. "Long as it doesn't involve bringing anyone to life, it will probably be something paltry."

Well, here it goes. "I want access to the river Lethe."

Laughter ceased, and his blue eyes that had seemed sleepy and uninterested were now fastened on me, the flames of his eyes shining a brilliant blue tinged with a primordial blackness.

"Would this happen to have anything to do with those damned souls?" He asked, releasing a cloud of smoke that formed into that of several faces, all of them a murderer and monster in their own rights. "Or, rather, the only one that isn't among them?"

I don't flinch at the statement, sounded more like accusation, merely flick a finger out opening a portal through the world, the floating slumbering form of Riley Davis floating through.

"You know that you will be killing her in turn. Denying her right to change and find redemption on her own."

"I don't believe that she can. Not really. And she is far too dangerous with what she does have access to." I responded back evenly, staring at the shards of corruption clinging to her soul. "Besides, what about all the lives that will be lost in an effort to reach that?"

"Are you so sure that she would be capable of it? I know that you can simply shut off those parasites influences on her if you so wished." He responded back, leaning in his chair, Judith refusing to be a part of the conversation, clinging Claire tighter towards her chest.

"While I could, simply lock her away forever until she changed, who is there to say that she wouldn't find some other means of enacting her experiments on people?" I asked, gesturing outside where Pokemon flew through the air, and also to him. "Who is to say that there wouldn't be something out there that would find an interest in her? Or that she won't find something else to do what she wishes?"

"I would not have found you to be someone to go this route." He said honestly, tapping his two pointing fingers along each other. "I assume that you have made preparations for the girl?"

I nodded. "Different options depending on what happens afterward. We don't know exactly what has changed. What magic has gone into the air, or what else is possible."

He hummed, and nodded. "It doesn't matter to me anyway. My job is simple, take care of the underworld and ensure there is an afterlife out there for souls to find their way. One of a few actually."

I try to ignore that second part. He wasn't wrong when he said that I had enough on my plate.

"I want something in return of course." He said evenly, eyeing me up and down, the thought on what he could get from me bouncing around his head like a little marble stuck in a bounce house.

I look around the little bakery for a moment, a little lightbulb lighting in my head.

"How's about I become your business partner?" I offered.

His eyebrow twitched. "And what would I have need for mortal money?"

"I don't know, what need do you have for forming a fucking bakery in L.A.?" I asked back.

"Touche. Though, I truly have no need for expanding beyond this little shop. I'm not Hermes, with a need to be connected to every random traveler and wanderer." There was satisfaction as he stared around the shop, a small hint of pride in there that… I wasn't really expecting from a god. "You are a horrible influence."

Wait, huh? "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Where do you think that we came from?" He asked instead of answering the fucking question, with something that I really didn't want to think about. "Where have all these changes sprung from in this formerly dying world?"

I feel my right cheek twitch at that.

"Yes, you. Just as the changes have sprung from you and that… thing that you are connected to, so were we. And therefore, we were influenced by you as well." He took another puff.

"I will stab any of you if you try calling me 'mother'." I shivered at that thought. I already had one daughter, and she tended to worry me enough as it was.

He waved a hand. "Believe me, none of us are truly interested in having that discussion."

"Good, I drink enough as is." I didn't need any more kids either, dammit.

"Somehow, I very much doubt that you are going to stop anytime soon." Hades mused, leaning back in his chair, while watching me with half lidded eyes.

"So, what is your answer?" I asked again.

"On access? Well, what do I get in return? I don't just let any living mortal into the underworld, after all." He snapped his fingers, sparks of blue flashing on the contact.

That was the question, huh? He didn't care for expanding, I could tell just off his body movement, his emotions and those of other gods were… muffled compared to that of everyone else. I had a feeling I could get a better read if I really focused, but for now I was just relishing in how much quieter it was. Even if I could still feel the rest of the block's jumble of emotions.

"I'm not 'any living mortal' I responded back evenly.

"No, you are not. I'm still not hearing a good reason, either." Hades leans back in his seat, regal, as if the simple wooden chair were a throne in the deepest parts of the Underworld.

I look around again, wondering just what the hell the god of the dead would care about.

Then I had an idea as Judith finished another pastry, walking to the counter and grabbing another, dropping the change on the counter before she went back to munching away.

"Do you happen to have a coffee machine?" I asked.

"I can't believe that got you the deal you wanted." Judith grumbled as we travel through what could only be described as a kaleidoscope of reality, everything around us rushing away in a blur of colors, Earth Bet behind us as we had set out. Didi was whistling a tune I didn't know, hands on the wheel as she steered her way through the space between world's as easily a marble on smooth stone.

"I'm as surprised as you are actually. But… well that is his hobby, and I figured that he didn't have everything that he wanted when he opened a bakery. Besides, the coffee is going to be absolutely divine." I was going to forge that shit with as much magic and Faith as I could. Let it never be said that I wasn't a woman of my word, dammit.

Hm, while enchanting some of the parts would be fine, I had to see about actually crafting some good parts for it all. Add in a magical battery that takes in ambient mana to power it. Just a coffee machine shouldn't be too power intrusive, along with ensuring that the power was as efficiently distributed. Perhaps some new cables and wiring that could properly pump it through the whole thing?

Ah, I was rambling again. Trying to just… forget about everything for a little while.

Riley… or rather the girl would be held in stasis while I was gone, though time should be diluted during our little trip for now.

The bath had been given, and the memories were gone. As were the curses that clung to her for years since her change.

It wasn't exactly a blessing, not really.

But perhaps some measure of life could be found in the future.

What that looked like, I didn't know. There were more mysteries in the world than I had realized.

"For someone who is supposedly the god of the underworld, he seemed more like an overworked dude in college." Judith whispered out, staring out the window with a smile on her face. "It's kinda comforting, actually."

"The one truth that almost every myth has, is that gods reflect our own traits back to us. For good and ill." There were plenty of gods out there that I'd rather not deal with, after all. Zeus and Hera were two of them, but I knew that ground rules had to be established.

Somehow, I didn't think that it was going to go as easy as I wanted it to.

"So, where are we going first Didi?" Judith asked Death herself, the young goth woman giving her a smile while she tapped away a tune on the steering wheel.

"Oh, I thought that we get this started with a quick stop somewhere." There was a teasing in her voice that made me nervous. "I think that you're going to want to stop by somewhere real quick."

Suddenly the crown of light dissipates, and we are surrounded by pure darkness, the only light that of the black cabs overhead.

"What the hell?" I ask, Didi giving me a quick smile.

"Let's just say that I learned a little trick for doors. Don't worry, you are being let off just where I think you would like. I'll pick you back up in a week or so." Huh?

"You aren't even going to tell me where you're dropping us off?" I asked.

"Oh, I think that you'll figure it out by yourself real quick." She said with a chuckle and wave. "I'll see you girls in a bit." Right before we could open the door, Didi snaps her fingers. "Oh, right! I almost forgot. Judith, would you be a dear and pull that lever by the door real quick?"

"Uh, sure?" Judith said with apprehension, pulling the lever just like Didi told her to. Moment that she did, the middle seat of the back lowers down, a bright lit opening revealing itself to us, and a head full of thick brown curly hair pokes out, Taylor blinking at us owlishly.

I breathe in, and breath out. Count to three, Mia. Don't let the accent come out.

Then she'd know just how much trouble she's going to be in.

I give her a smile, a large, wide thing that conveyed no warmth as I felt my eyes go cold and light began to shine from behind me. I faintly heard Estrella cackle in the back of my head as Taylor went pale and refused to meet my eyes.

"And just what do you think that you are doing?" I couldn't hear what she said as the doors open and we were all but ejected out of the car, the sound of baby Claire giggling, and her little arm waving at us from Didi's arms registering as I twist in the air. Briefly, I mentally grab onto both Taylor and Judith, making sure that neither of them landed too badly as we floated down to the ground.

For now, I ignore the fact that we're somewhere underground, with the walls and floor a white so bright that it practically exuded 'evil lab' vibes, instead focusing completely on the teenage stowaway. I kept the smile firmly locked on my face as I crouched down enough to be at her eye level. Being seven foot had its advantages, after all.

I stared her down, one train of thought focused on her, another one focusing on the emotions of those that inhabited this place. Given how few people there were here, I would hazard a guess that it was either super secluded, or really late.

There was something about the emotions of the people here that… worried me. Uncaring apathy, and a coldness to their emotions that was just three steps from cruelty.

Yet, there was one light in this sea of nothingness. A beacon of life, one that was incredibly young, that yearned for care and comfort in the way that new life did.

"I heard that you were going away and… hopped in? Didi said it was fine." Taylor mumbled out, eyes flitting around from side to side, avoiding looking in my direction.

"And did you tell anyone else that you were coming with?" I asked.

"Did you?" She retorted back, her spine coming back and eyes focusing on mine as I narrowed my hetero chromatic orbs.

I'll say this about her, she didn't flinch. "One, I am grown and have plenty of people around that are good at their jobs. Two, there aren't many things that can take me down without a fight out there in the multiverse." I left out the part that there were plenty that could give me a good beating and probably kill me after the first blow.

She still stared up at me with what I might have called imperious, if I didn't feel the complete embarrassment breakdown she was having on the inside. Instead of tugging on that thread, I sigh, and turn around, gesturing towards the end of the hallway. "Come on, no point in just standing around here. We should see where we're at. And you're telling your father that you snuck aboard this trip this time around. I didn't kidnap you."

I didn't bother asking how she managed to sneak aboard in the first place. Didi was one of those few beings that I could probably never truly catch up with.

Not without doing something extremely stupid. And powerhungry.

I knew where those roads led.

"So, any thoughts on where we are?" Judith asked, opening her box's holster and keeping her ring hand close to it, the flame of her resolve just a thought away from igniting.

The large stylized "V" sent something in the back of my head tingling. A disgusted thought that practically screamed at my head.

"Do you have any bugs here, Taylor?" I asked her as I shifted my vision to see the lines of electricity that coursed thorough the building. There were cameras on the ceiling, which were easily dealt with as I shifted my presence into an untraceable form. They were old.

At least, old by my standards. Human make, boxy with parts that were extremely outdated even for human technology.

Given how expensive and isolated this place was, the power lines lead up for shit's sake, these were the state of the art for the time. Given their make and model, I'd say earlier than the fucking 1990's. Quality was probably shit too, but that didn't mean a simple illusion spell couldn't deal with the problem.

The tech was old enough that I couldn't hack it by means that I was used to, not without tipping off whoever was watching this from the other end of the line. One of the advantages to using old tech.

"Plenty of flies and spiders in the vents." Taylor said simply, eyes focused forward as they both followed in my wake, their sense peeled and weapons at the ready should anyone come.

Given that everyone in this facility remained calm, they hadn't noticed us quite yet.

Well, that might not be true soon.

I followed the beacon of emotion in this den of apathy, right into a heavy steel thick door, two guards standing there, wearing matching uniforms, the same purple 'V' on their right breast and shoulders.

They never saw us coming. Or, rather, Judith, as she sped past us and two solid strong blows to the both of their heads at my insistence.

"Nice, you were gentle enough that all they'll get is a concussion." I offered over as I administer a mild… amnesiac. Shouldn't be too much of a problem, well, that was a lie, they might get a few muscle cramps, but nothing that wouldn't go away within a few weeks.

"Door's locked tight. Thick too." Judith said evenly as she stared at the steel plated thing. "Want me to cut through it?"

"Nah, would rather if they don't know what happened here. Keep them guessing on what happened."

"So you do know where this is." Judith said with numb eyes as Taylor brought out her wires and began maneuvering them through the cracks of the wall.

"I have a guess, and we shouldn't be in too much danger. Not really." This world might have some outliers in terms of powers, but most won't be too much of an issue.

The sound of gears whirring and turning is enough to get us to look over as Taylor brings her wires back into her box, frown deepening on her wide mouth as she sent some insects through. "There's a baby in there. They don't even have him in a crib or anything. Just a blanket on the floor. He's sleeping."

That anger of hers was already boiling, but she kept her features schooled. Not due to shoving her emotions into her bugs, but this time through sheer practice.

My own was set at a hard-boil as I opened the almost foot thick steel doors open with barely a shove, the mechanisms keeping them in place undone.

What was inside was another room, but it was more of a large see through cage, as the child inside slept on, the walls no doubt soundproof to keep him from waking up or hearing anything. He looked to be a year old, healthy and hardy, wearing clean clothes and wrapped in a blue fuzzy blanket, that he used as a makeshift pillow for his blond head on the floor.

And that was it.

There were some computers and notebooks, along with tools and buttons, no doubt to release gas or something to keep the child in check. I was sure that this place was set to blow if he ever broke containment.

Both Taylor and Judith looked reasonably angry at the sleeping babies conditions, unknowing of the fact that they currently looked at the strongest being on this planet. And one that would grow into a raging narcissistic monster.

You know what? Fuck subtlety.

I deactivate the controls and whatever else they have primed on this thing, cutting the door in half with Estrella, who shone bright in red rage, and tore the two pieces onto the floor, causing the child to start awake.

Which meant he floated a few inches in the air, and had his baby blue eyes focused on me. He didn't cry, he didn't scream, but he did stare at me with wide surprised eyes. There was confusion and fear in there, worry of… something happening. Flashes of painful memories flitting through his head, not really comprehending what he was feeling. As if the door opening was a prelude to something horrible.

His eyes begin to shine red, the heat and lasers preparing in fear, when ghostly rainbow hands touch his forehead, Without Question appearing to him with a smile as I convey my own emotions to him, even while I feel his own. That of safety, worry and comfort. Of promised home that he would never have.

The light in his eyes dim down, Taylor and Judith relaxing behind me as I step into the room with careful quiet footsteps. Little eyes watch with curiosity, lowering back down into the ground as I grew closer and closer, his tiny form retreating into himself, afraid of this stranger getting close to him. Yet he still didn't cry.

That had never helped him before, after all, had it?

I crouch down and slowly wrap my arms around him, the boy flinching before I whisper into his ear and mind "Calmate pequeño (calm down little one), I'm not going to hurt you." Relaying the emotions of sincerity through our connection as I stand up and hold the boy that would have grown into Homelander in my arms.

He remained there for a few moments, face buried in my shoulder and body motionless, not knowing what to do with this new experience. Then, he shifts his little arms around one of my arms and cries. He cries, and cries and cries in what might have felt like forever, shaking and sobbing, relishing in the warmth and safety that every child deserved.

Yet, he had never been shown that for a moment in his life. At that moment, I made a promise to this child. That he would have that comfort. He would have that love that he'd never have.

And that he would never become the monster that he would have. "Te Prometo" (I promise) His arms squeezed even harder, and honestly, I was probably the only person on the planet that could hug him without worrying about him breaking me into pieces. His strength was nothing compared to taking a punch from Quetzalcoatl.

"I was going to say we can't kidnap a baby, but you know what? Fuck it." Judith said as brought out her armor, plates of golden light forming along her face and shoulders.

"I don't have to tell my dad about this, do I? I don't think that child kidnapping is something he would be happy with." Taylor said with a forced laugh, her awkwardness radiating off her, not knowing what to say.

"At this point, your dad already doesn't like me, so I doubt this is going to be much of a factor." He still cried on my shoulder, letting out every emotion that he had numbed down after years of inattention. I just held him tighter, careful with my own strength.

The pain with every breath was but a normal nuisance. A chronic condition I had long since grown used to. Same with the patches of crystalline stone that grew along my arms and legs, along with the underside of my tail. Yet, those had nothing to do with the blood on the floor, or the cuts all along my body.

My death would come, not due to my illness, but due to the protection of the other Infected around me. It was a death I was happy with. Even if they were nothing more than children racing through the slums of Lungmen, it was enough.

This was not my home. Victoria was so very far away, and these were not my countrymen. But we were united by the pain of chance and loss. In the hope that we would someday find love and peace in this broken fucked up world.

I wouldn't be there to see it, not with all these Reunion members coming for them. Coming for me. But that was alright. My time was already up anyway. Whether it be tonight, or a few months from now, at least I could do some good with this one last fight.

Amiya, find the Doctor. Find the one person that can help lead us through this nightmare. Kal'tsit. I know you won't forgive him for what happened in the past, and I don't expect you to.

But please find it in your heart to at least tolerate him. I ask, but I already know you will. The lives of everyone around you has always been stronger than your grief.

Doctor, lead them from here. Find some measure of peace for them. And I hope you change. We don't need the monster that you are, but the good man you once were.

I spit out some more blood, focusing inward, on the energy that coursed through me as I focused my arts around me, the various sigils and archaic symbols dancing around as I willed them into being. They came at me with sword and bomb, with arrow and led, as I charged forward, my own club in hand as I released a flurry of ice and ash into the air.

My death came, yes, but I took them with me, a smile on my bloody face.

Mia

He fell asleep not too long after that, exhaustion from the crying creeping onto him, clinging to me as if I would be gone when he woke up.

A couple of shadow clones traversed the facility while we made our way out, and… well, the situation wasn't that bad.

Sure, being stuck in 1982 had its share of problems. The Cold War was in full swing, Russia and America were staring at each other with nukes, the Berlin Wall was still a few years away from coming down, and there was a mega corporation peddling its super drug around the world to unsuspecting victims.

Because that was what the future supes were. Victims to a power that would serve as a leash around their neck for the rest of their life. For every 'hero' that rose in the world was destined to someday be yanked by the rope around their neck.

The child in my arms was proof of that.

While I was busy tearing this place apart, along with taking every record and documentation kept in this place, I twitched as something new connected. A set of stars that were filled with… pain. More pain that many of my other lives. Yet, there was a resolution in them. An unwillingness to back down or submit.

When the memories settle, I bite my lip in irritation. Infected. An illness that turned your own body against you, in a world where the planet itself could be infected by the magic rocks of originium. The knowledge was nice, as were the… beginnings of these arts. Runes and symbols that meant nothing to anyone except for me.

Playing with them was something that could be done later, but I felt… something off. For some reason, my pants felt tight at the back.

"Oh goddammit." I whisper as I turn around when I noticed Taylor and Judith staring wide-eyed.

Sure enough, the back of my slacks were fit to bursting, the new appendage struggling to contain itself within.

"Not a word." I tell the two teens, to which they both hold their hands up in surrender as I summon a clone to make a fucking hole for it. The tail slips out, green and feathered in quills of blue, red and green, while I see that horns were now jutting out of my head. They, of course, were also feathered.

Urgh.

Whatever. I needed to change my appearance here anyways. Unlike Earth Bet, I was a complete unknown here, and I was going to keep blending in here. Some anonymity was nice.

Shrinking down back to barely above five feet was nice, even if I did miss some of my more… strange features. Though, I did leave my hair streaked in white, the eyes I left alone. Sunglasses were a thing here anyway.

Getting out of here wasn't much of an issue, sure there were guards both in the underground facility, and the building up top, but it wasn't like they could really do anything to us.

Judith and Taylor could have gotten out of here on their own, no problem, anyway.

This place had been in Boston of all places, near somewhere central that I didn't recognize, but then again, I didn't really travel much in my first life, and what memories came from my time as President was a good fifty years ago. Which of course meant that we got the fuck out of there as soon as possible.

Flying at least a paltry work thanks to Taylor and Judith's suits, though I had to slow down my own speed so as not to leave them both behind.

We headed southwest, stopping at some point before hitting Washington DC in the middle of the wilderness in the darkness. Opening a portal to the Workshop wasn't really possible either. Not when it needed to remain open for those that needed it back home. And crossing into the Temple wasn't working for whatever reason.

I didn't let it worry me, chalking it up to something that Didi was doing for shits and giggles.

It wasn't like it was a that much of a nuisance anyways. Not when I could… do just about anything I wanted, really.

I could just make a home thanks to Arc of Embodiment, but decided it would be best to leave as little imprints as possible. You know, unless I wanted to.

So, let's test something else out for a little while, shall we?

I was going to hand the baby – I wasn't calling him fucking Homelander - to Judith, but Estrella appeared next to me, appearance unchanged, except for the warm sweater and jeans that replaced her usually revealing golden armor. Without a word, she took the baby into her arms, his sleeping form snuggling closer into her as she gently swaddled him.

"What? Is it really a surprise that I like babies? I'm you remember?" She asked with a cheeky grin, the new tail behind her swishing back and forth like a dog. "Hard to believe someone as cute as this one could grow up to become that monster."

"Every tyrant and monster born in the world was originally a baby like him." It was choice and circumstances that created saints and demons, for better or worse. I had to remember that, with all the power at my hands, I could become one just as easily.

Too easily.

Shelving that happy thought away, I embody some paints, brushes, and an easel with a fresh canvas hanging from it.

Now, how exactly was I going to make this work?

"What the hell is she doing now?" Taylor whispered over to Judith, who shrugged her shoulders.

"Something dumb, so typical for Mia."

"Why did Didi keep Claire with her?" Taylor asked, to which, once again, Judith shrugged her shoulders.

"Probably wanted to make sure we had an 'actual' vacation or something. That idea's out the window now." There was a hint of amusement in her voice as I dipped the wide tipped brush into a nice light blue and began to dash long gentle strokes across the top of the canvas.

"And you're just fine with leaving your baby with death." I chuckled to myself at that hint of hysteria in the bug controller's voice, the nearby insects buzzing just a little louder with the outburst.

"If she wanted to take my baby, I doubt that there would be much any of us could do about it. Sides, Claire is the first baby that she held that wasn't… you know." Light amusement was tinged with grounded melancholy, notes of safety ringing from Judith's soul.

Blue was replaced with white, little clouds adorned across the sky as I began to allow the magic within me to flow into the painting. Hm, should I try to control this? Put a 'cork' in the flow to limit exactly how much I was putting into this?

Nah! Let's go ham and see what happens!

Yes, there was only so much that I could fit in the canvas, but the image wasn't truly the most important part, oh no. An image holds a thousand words, and what isn't there speaks a million.

Focus, Mia. Sure, this was just a spur of the moment fancy, a little inconsequential moment of wanting to use a new toy, but I couldn't help that anchor of expectation. Of wanting to do my best for this little place that we could momentarily call home.

Meta Art was a new ability, one that should remain a fledgling unpracticed capability. While magic was my talent, crafting was my training.

A painting was simply another discipline I had long since mastered, one that could be pushed further and further into something new. Though, I still think that Leonardo could become better than I was now. His was a talent and dedication brought on by a lifetime of study, and he had all the time in the world now.

Sigh, if I didn't know that he would enjoy the work back home more than the vacation, I might have brought him along.

Last I saw him, he was working on the proper power output for that Spider thing that I'd never really thought to build.

Goddamn it, I said focus, not let your mind wander you stupid bitch! At first, I didn't know what I wanted to paint, no idea what kind of landscape that I wanted to create in this little world, but then it came to me. The first place that I had known as 'home' in my life, the first one, before all the memories and abilities had come.

The blur of colors and speed gave way to a landscape of green, with small hills visible in the distance, the sight of grass and dirty brown dirt muddling the landscape with wonderful imperfections. And there, on a cultivated hill, was a small cottage. One built of wood and cheap brick that had been reinforced two generations after it had been built, a fence and smaller buildings surrounding it. Chicken coops, barns, and pens for animals, the occasional chicken or goat sighted as little dots.

Yet, they were there. I knew they were there, and other observers would know. According to the light shining, it was midday, and who knew what else was out there, past the distance of this painted world?

I knew it wasn't exactly like my grandmothers home in Mexico, the one built by her great-grandfather that was then fortified by her own father, a momentary glorification of my memories. Yet it carried all those emotions, those hopes, dreams, and moments of peace that had helped push me forward during those homeless days.

There were minute microseconds when I focussed on the bare emotions, others were instead used constructing the laws of physics that would bear on the world inside. Gravity, light, cellular progression, evolution, the void of space above the sky, and more on simply what could happen instead of what will.

When I finished the small painting, it had grown to be bigger than I was now. I couldn't help but giggle a little as I lifted the painting with a thought and realized that the edges were above my head.

"Home?" Judith asked as Estrella gently rocked the baby in her arms, cooing soft comforts to him in his dreams as Taylor peered at the painting that was almost as tall as her.

I nod. "It was a little ranch in San Luis, it had been in my family for… a long time." I murmured gently touching the canvas and feeling a pull from it, one that I accept and relish as it melts into the joyous colors of nostalgia, the feeling of a warm sun touching my hand. Turning, I give them all a nice big smile. "Want to come in?"

Without another word, I step through and breath in the smell of greenery and warm earth, spreading my arms and basking in the sun as my friends followed behind me.

"Was the painting really necessary?" Taylor asked. "Couldn't you have just popped into one of your many pocket dimensions?"

"Hey, I haven't had a chance to use this ability yet, and I felt like relieving some stress through it! It isn't like it took me that long!" I complained back. It had barely taken fifteen minutes alright!

"Backaw!" A chicken squawked as she walked past us, staring up at me with a wary eye, as if measuring if I had any feed on me. I give a chuckle as I grab the bag that abuela had kept in the shed and speed it towards me, the wind parting easily as grains begin to fall to the floor. Feathers of white and cries of delight fill the air as we walk into the home that I hadn't seen in what felt like centuries.

Life knows that I have plenty of lifetimes shoved into my skull.

Everything inside was just like how I remembered it, though perhaps just a bit… brighter. More potent than the mundanity it had actually been.

Finding the coffee was easy, as was the tea that Abuela kept around for home remedies. The three of us sat around the table, Estrella sitting in the rocking chair, moving back and forth as she held the child in her arms.

"Coffee is great as always, Mia." Judith sipped on her cup, box weapon and belt on the table as she relaxed. "Though, is the painting going to be alright just out in the middle of the woods?"

"It'll be fine. My stuff is built to last, afterall. The worst thing we have to worry about it someone finding the painting and taking it with them. And with the world that we're in, we don't have much to really worry about. There isn't really much here that could pose a problem for any one of us." If anything, I'd bet money that Judith and Taylor could take care of most of the 'supes' in this world without my help.

"How bad is this place?" Taylor quietly asked, expression neutral, but I could feel that rage bubbling underneath.

"Honestly? Pretty bad. Powers here are completely controlled by a company called Vought which managed to get their hands on superpowers in a can." I slap a folder I had scrolled through on the flight here onto the table. "It just so happened that the one that actually developed the serum was some Nazi fuck that fled Germany when the tides were changing, and he struck a deal with the US. This world doesn't have any true heroes, not for long. Not before the company gets their claws into them" The venom in my voice could melt through steel, Estrella's eyes glowing bright gold as she held the baby close to her chest.

"Thing is, the Nazi asshole only managed to create two perfect serums that could work on anyone. One given to his bitch of a wife who is still around, another to some rich prick who wanted glory. The rest of this 'Compound V' is lethal to adults if given to them, while kids and fetus are the only ones that can safely take the crap." Estrella's eyes burned like miniature suns, the horns on her head shining as if they were going to burst into flames any second now.

"They're experimenting on kids before they're even born?" Judith asked with a deceptively calm voice, her blue eyes cold as polar Flames of Rain shining on her finger, flowing with the intensity of a hurricane.

I nodded. "Honestly? This is a vacation. And I think I'm actually going to take some time to enjoy everything here. Toppling a company should be a nice side hobby while we're here. After all… it's only built on money that they get off their produce… and it would be such a shame if something were to happen to it."

After all, I had plenty of information on that shit, along with a perfect reference of what it could do to a human. Couple of sensors shouldn't be too much trouble, I wasn't cutting into a baby for christ's sake, but that didn't mean that I wasn't going to use every advantage that I could get.

"Does this mean we aren't going to kick anyone's ass?" Judith asked, with a pout, as if I had just told her that we couldn't go to her favorite concert or something.

"Oh, we can do that! I never said we wouldn't. Though, if I'm going to be honest, I don't think I'm going to do much asskicking this time around." I said honestly, sipping on my coffee while I embodied pieces of lumber, cloth, and other necessities.

"What? Mia choosing not to beat someone's ass? Did I step into opposite world or something?" Judith asked with mock horror, one hand over her mouth while she looked from side to side. Cheeky brat.

"Listen, I came here to relax, and that's what I'm going to do dammit!" I don't quite howl, but I do feel my eyes sparkle as I start thinking about the road trip I was planning in my head. "Besides, it 1982! Do you know what that means!?"

"That phones are still tied to landlines?" Taylor quips, which I wave off.

"No, it means that Freddie Mercury is still alive!" Yes, I squealed. No, I don't care. Do you have a signed copy of one of their albums? Cause I'm going to! "And AIDS are a bitch disease, I've had a cure in my head for a few weeks but was waiting to use that little chip back home for something else."

"Wait, wh-" I cut Taylor off with another bout of excitement.

"There are so many things that are still around that aren't going to be soon! The Berlin Wall is still around, and while I can't tear that bitch down without nukes raining down, I might be able to steal a piece or make a few guards have a couple bad days." I was on a tangent now, but I didn't care. "Fuck, do you know just how much shit was happening in the eighties? Sure, I can't fuck up Reagan's campaign, but I can make a few… boondoggles here and there." I ignore the indignant sound at the back of my head, fuck you Reagan, and start to rack my brain. "Dammit, now I wish I had studied the eighties a bit more."

"Yeah, cause the Cold War was such a cheery era." Judith mutters.

"Oh god, people still have nukes in this world." Taylor mutters under her breath, terror managing to shine in her heart before she quenches under sheer stubbornness.

"Which is why I'm going to refrain from turning the Berlin Wall into a pile of rubble. I don't need my first vacation stop to end with a nuclear winter." Fallout was already out there in the multiverse, no need to make another one in this world.

"So, you want to just tear this company down, all while avoiding sparking a nuclear war?" Judith asked slowly, as if she was wondering if I had lost my mind.

"Yup." I let that last 'p' pop a bit.

Judith takes a deep breath and lets it out through her nose, that irritating of her boiling underneath that fake calm that she was managed to learn.

"Fine. So, what's the first step?"

I smile as I begin to pop out folders and boxes, each one filled to the brim with documents. "Easy, we start to read through these."

Their groans of annoyance were music to my ears. It was just enough to make me forget that new melancholy that filled my mind.

Those new memories were… horrifying.

A world infected by a magic rock that was the only real fuel source that civilization had managed to properly use. Even the tiniest of scratches are liable to Infect you, to turn you into a future statue of pure Originium.

The Arts were a nice addition, little symbols of an unknown language that I didn't understand, capable of conveying effects on the world.

I didn't care about any of that, though.

Rhodes Island, were you all still out there? Fighting for a world where the Infected can live their lives disease free and in peace from the persecution and fear of the world? Amiya, did you find the Doctor in that latest mission? Did you protect her Ace?

Kal'tsit, did you manage to find some measure of peace in that world?

Unlike some of my other memories, there were so many connections in that world. So many reasons to get up and fight instead of sheer stubborn spite that was my usual norm.

Perhaps I would find out one day.

One Day.

Judith

The files had been… illuminating. And enough to make her want to just up and leave this dimension, stay in the fucking cottage in the painting for the rest of the trip.

But Mia wanted to actually enjoy herself in the good that could be found in this world.

And she couldn't blame her friend for wanting to just relax and ignore… everything for a little while. She still wasn't alright after… everything.

Or for whatever memories cropped up in the latest 'connection'. Judith had learned to notice that glassy look in her friend's eyes, no matter how good Mia had gotten at hiding it.

Mia claimed that she could whip up a few things to wreck Vought into the ground, and Judith actually did believe her this time around.

That didn't mean there weren't some bodies that needed to be put into the ground.

A thought that Mia and Judith didn't share with Taylor. The bug controller still thought that people needed to be given time to change, the chance of it at least.

Judith thought that there were some people that just needed to be gone from the world before they hurt any more people. And Mia did too.

Not before getting some… evidence, of course.

Getting those camera recordings and photos of that Nazi bitches 'culling's' hadn't been easy. Especially not when it was her coming into the room instead of Mia, but she managed to convince them through photos of Claire.

The brightest light in her life.

How many mothers had lost their children to that cunt? How many sons and daughters forced to watch as their parents were murdered for something as inconsequential as the color of their skin?

She didn't let it slide when it was against her own parents, and she sure as shit wasn't going to let it go here either.

"Please, you don't have to do this! We didn't do anything wrong!" A voice sobbed, that of an older woman, her speech slurred as if she was talking through bloody lips and bloated tongue.

"Oh, I think that your stench is more than enough of a wrongdoing. After all, don't you just hate it when it stinks like fish in your house? I don't want to smell any chicken around me, either." Another woman laughed back, the joy practically radiating from her voice as Judith approached. It was the sound of babies crying that drove that vein in her head crazy and Judith let her hand blaze with Flames of Rain.

"I'm going to have to ask Mia to fix this." She muttered to herself before donning her armor in a flash of yellow light, smashing through the wall, right at the woman in bright blues and reds, lightning crackling through her fingers as she pointed a hand at a kneeling black woman, cradling a young boy's bloody head in her hands.

"Wh-" The bitch didn't have a chance to say another word, a fist propelled by full powered thrusters connecting to her jaw, sending her flying back through the window into the darkness of the Mississippi air.

"Here, take one of these and give the other to your son." Judith quickly says, tossing two yellow bottles of elixir at the kneeling woman.

"Who-?" She flew out of the door, ignoring the woman's questions and hoping that she would just give her boy the healing salve.

She barely managed to summon a barrier of light in front of her against the torrent of electric bolts that were trying to flash fry her.

A smile made its way onto her face as she saw the blood leaking down Klara's mouth, even while the dark haired woman glared poison at her. Poison that gave way to surprise as her eyes focused on her face.

"Why would an Aryan care about the lives of those darkies?" The woman asked her, lightning gathering in her palms again, charging them up no doubt.

Well, we can't have that, now can we? Judith charged through the air, thrusters bearing at full strength as she shoved her Rain Flames into the box at her hip, the blue flames manifesting into the weapon she'd begged for Mia to make her, the one that she had seen a Squat use against Leviathan.

It was bigger than she was, almost ten feet tall, the handle smooth and carved with the images of swallows. Polished silver and wood gave way towards the giant golden axe head at the top, the edge lined with teeth tinged with the flow of her Rain flames.

A press of the button on the handle had those teeth spinning, the sound almost silent, albeit with a minor buzz in the night air.

Blue lightning went to meet her, and she swung with her Chainaxe, her propulsion actually slowed against the torrent of flames.

It was enough for her to miss the bitches head and instead get one of her legs.

"AAAH!" Klara screamed out, blood rushing out of her stump onto the street floor, the silence only growing as those that had been hiding in their homes hid even further.

That was what you did when you grew up in a neighborhood like this, after all. Duck your head, and mind your own fucking business. No one can get your ass for something you don't know.

Stopping in midair, she punched forward, sending a column of light at the screaming 'superhero', the woman sprawling onto the floor amidst her screams.

"To answer your question-" Judith said as she lifted her axe over her head, the blades spinning in place as she held the button down. "-it's because I have a black baby, bitch!"

She swung down, and the world was a better place for it.