I am not dead. And I shall continue this fic.
BTW, important notice, I was an idiot and my discord account got hacked. However, discords support HAS done their job, and I have it back, but the old server got destroyed. We've got all active members at a new server, though, so we're chilling. There's a new link now, and the server owner is now hosted on an account that I 'll be doing absolutely nothing on, so the server won't be gone… unless that one also gets hacked.
Just a quick PSA.
New link: discord . gg / s2uFUydRVd
Anyways, Hans and other servant shenanigans. I promise this is the only one. It won't be like the other crossover fics where other servants pop out of the woodwork. There are only going to be foreshadowed servants (this one here is the demonic posters that Stain and Spinner have been hunting for months), and Kiara is Kiara, so yeah.
I'll hold myself to that.
-SpiritOfErebus
…
What was she?
A sentient collection of fairy tales? A concept given life? A strange, eldritch abomination summoned into this world by her master?
Why did she even think about thinking this? Why does a collection of fairy tales have a gender? Why was she even thinking about this stuff, if she wasn't summoned with an identity? Was she even "she"?
Nursery Rhyme, the name she was given from the memory of her Master, was absolutely devoid of tales. In fact, she was summoned without them. All that remained were blank pages, and a yearning to be something. Anything.
And all that she had now was the scrap that Hans Christian Andersen had given her. He had thought that she was just a helpless child, but that match had given her a definite shape. A definite identity. And yet still so empty. A nameless little girl.
And if she absorbed Hans, she could become whole. Something with purpose. Something with… a story. How she knew this, she didn't know. She just knew.
But for now, she was just the match. Just the hopes and prayers of the little girl that froze to death out there in the streets. The hopes and prayers that went up in smoke after just a bit of burning. The matches had provided such little heat in comparison to the exposure of that cold, wintery day.
Just like the little girl's hopes and dreams in the first place. They were already a fragile, nearly nonexistent thing.
Circling around the energy that her master, Kiara, was obviously using for some world ending ritual, Nursery Rhyme decided that now, it would be hers.
And so, absorbing the energy like a newly divorced mother absorbed child support, the energy stopped what it was actually supposed to do… before beginning to funnel into another project: Nursery Rhyme's very existence: the state of being a Reality Marble. Her internal world expanded, filling with the purple energy that was born of sacrificing thousands of cultists around the world.
Kiara's ritual itself was designed to be a cascading reaction, using the souls that it absorbed to further accelerate the area of the afflicted areas, which would then expand until all of humanity was consumed, save for the few that Kiara had coded in exemptions for.
It theoretically wasn't Nursery Rhyme's mana to control either, but since Kiara was technically her master, despite the lack of command seals, Nursery Rhyme was uniquely suited to absorbing the mana.
However, despite the energy that she now had, the fact of the matter was that Nursery Rhyme's reality marble was basically an empty void. The only bit of essence that was there was the match that her fellow servant had given her many months ago, and expanding near emptiness was difficult.
So, where would she find the content to fill in her newly created world? Where would she find the content that she could amplify and expand within her reality marble?
There were a lot of people in the theater, after all. And her fellow servant was nearby, as well. With his tales and her power, they could finally create a world.
What would that world do?
Well, she was just the reality marble. It didn't matter what happened with it, so long as it existed. Besides, absorbing the tales likely would grant her a purpose, wouldn't it?
So many ordinary stories… So many struggles and triumphs… all waiting in the souls surrounding the theater.
Nursery Rhyme had the energy now, and it was time to use it.
…
The power was intoxicating.
It was suffocating, but in a way that felt warm. It was a slow, gradual ascension to paradise. Kiara felt her ritual begin to take hold, absorb, and continue to spread.
As her followers continued to melt, the last bits of their essence fueling the completion of the ritual, something… snapped.
Kiara felt her connection with the ritual break. Everything suddenly felt cold. Everything suddenly felt dull and gray, despite being the exact same colors as before.
"What?" she blurted out, turning around to look at the ritual circle. Its colors were flashing too, and slowly, the remains of her followers began to turn to ash, swirling and collecting into the air.
Slowly, it formed a face. It was barely humanoid, and seemed like a cruel, gray mockery of an actual person.
"I'm sorry, master." the face voice whispered, before beginning to dissipate.
"What? When did I summon you?"
The voice didn't respond.
Kiara slumped to the ground sideways, suddenly feeling exhausted. Her ritual was just… stolen?
Was that even a thing that could happen?
And when did she summon that… thing? The head almost looked like a little girl's head, and if there were caster servants that looked like that and associated with the concept of Hans, it was probably… Nursery Rhyme?
Suddenly, the crystal ball that was monitoring Hans shook, and Kiara quickly ran over to look. In the scene, Hans was running. Not away, but towards the theater.
"How out of character…" Kiara muttered. "Perhaps you feel guilt for your failures? Perhaps you simply can't ignore suffering potentially caused by you, can you?"
What exactly was going on?
Hans would find out for her.
…
The mana was so incredibly rich in the air.
That was the only thought on Hans' mind as people started to run out of the theater, screaming. Despite the warning of the crowds, Hans went into the life threatening situation instead of away from it. The Iida brothers worked on evacuating civilians, but Hans instead ran forwards instead of following the standard protocol of getting civilians out first.
Because the tingling on his skin, and in his spirit origin, told him that this thing was related to him.
Getting civilians truly out of the situation would be impossible without stopping whatever that was first.
Somehow, he had caused this. Or, well, whatever force had brought him to this world had done this. And it was fairly obvious who, or what, was doing this.
Nursery rhyme. As Hans stepped into the theater, he felt the floor suddenly shift. It clawed at his spirit origin and the tales that lurked within him. This… was a reality marble. And somehow, it had borders. Because something about it wasn't quite right…
Quickly, he stepped out of it, but a hand suddenly emerged from the floor and grabbed him.
"Hans." the voice gargled, sounding like fifty different people. Some voices were old, some voices were young, and some voices seemed as if they were being ground out from a cheese grater. Which made sense, considering the variety of quirks in this world.
Then, the reality marble disappeared, coalescing once more into first a book, and then a humanoid shape.
It was exceedingly clear now.
"Nursery Rhyme."
"So that's my name." the discombobulation said, this time only utilizing female voices. It seemed like the servant was finally narrowing down my identity. "Well, I know you. You… you gave me this."
"What?"
"The match." the humanoid shape said, holding out her hand. With a shimmer of blue light, the match that Hans had given to what he had thought was just a normal little girl appeared in her hands. "With this, I-"
Hans snapped his fingers. The match disappeared.
"You think it would be that easy?" Nursery Rhyme mused, tilting her head slightly, almost as if she was confused.
"Well, no." Hans admitted. "But it's worth giving it a shot, isn't it? But that wasn't what I did."
Quickly, a blue arena appeared around the figure, and Hans quickly sent out file after file of character analysis and descriptions of his classmates in this manga world. His powers didn't work well on canon things, so it would reason that Nursery Rhyme would struggle breaking through it, right?
As a cage formed around her in the shape of a blue light, the enemy wraith did nothing.
"You understand nothing about the ritual fueling me." Nursery Rhyme declared. "This ritual didn't have enough power to be world-ending in the first place. It was meant to consume. Consume and grow. There was no stopping this. Ever."
One of her hand, still alternating between the model for arms of different people, reached for the bars of the cages, and Hans immediately snapped his fingers, making the bars dissolve. The pages coalesced back onto his hands, forming a shimmering armor of conceptual narratives.
"Smart. Smart and convenient." Nursery Rhyme noted, her hands clasping down on anything.
"You didn't talk like this back in Chaldea." Hans noted. "What changed?"
"There was nothing to change. I was a blank slate. Nothing, before you gave me that match. I was just a wraith seeking form, and you've given me that form. I now have that story. And with this ritual, I can finally… absorb it from you."
There was a tear within Hans's soul, Hans didn't know whether it was created just now or if it had been there from the beginning, and with it, the little match girl was forcibly summoned and dragged towards the floating form. The little girl wailed, reaching back at Hans, who could do nothing but watch.
His attacks and attempts at restraining the wraith would only strengthen her, after all. Hans gritted his teeth as the little match girl disappeared into blue sparks.
"How convenient for a world ender to be immune to attacks."
"Isn't it just?"
The abomination's form flickered until it became a cruel mockery of the little match girl. There was the same dress and the same hair, but the completely blank expression made Nursery Rhyme definitely more of an eldritch horror than an average girl with supernatural abilities.
"Much better. Now, for the rest of your 155 stories."
Hans took one step back. Then another.
"Finally realizing how hopelessly outmatched you are?"
Yes, yes Hans was.
He was definitely outmatched.
But there was still one hope. The canon. The narrative significance of characters. Hans's noble phantasm really didn't work on the particularly significant ones, and that was literally something tailor made to develop characters. And since Iida was close friends with Midoriya… wouldn't that work?
But how could he articulate that to Ingenium? Saying that only Iida's' attacks would work could never actually-
Two people landed next to him. Hans turned, and saw a person he definitely did not want to see.
"So. You're the new supervillain in town, huh?" Stain said, pointing a katana at Nursery Rhyme. Somebody dressed like counter guardian EMIYA also pointed a cosplay sword at her.
"You're the one that's been causing all those demonic posters." the EMIYA cosplayer continued, getting into a vaguely threatening stance.
To give the green lizardly cosplayer credit, at least it was a metal sword.
Despite the circumstances, Hans wanted to go curl up in a corner and cry. Why was Stain standing up for him?
"Wh-what even is this?" Hans muttered. "Seriously, what possible chain of events could have happened to make this something that I have to deal with now?"
"So. My hunters return. You who desired to destroy my corporeal form." Nursery Rhyme said, clearly having had some type of background adventure without him. "But now, I think you'll find your attempts at destroying me… utterly insignificant."
"Well, do you bleed?" Stain said, brandishing his katana.
"No, don't do it!" Hans shouted. Quickly, summoning the elder tree mother, he swept away the civilians that, for some god-forsaken reason, gathered to watch the incident. The branches gently shoved at the people before they finally got the message and started to run even further away than they had already been.
Leaping into the air, bouncing off a wall, Stain attacked the floating form of Nursery Rhyme with his katana from the back. The EMIYA cosplayer threw his attempts at making Kanshou and Bakuya in a surprisingly competent manner, the blades curving in at the wraith from both the left and the right. To finish off the assault, the cosplayer unsheathed yet another sword and stabbing forwards.
"My friends, you've selected a terrible opponent to face. There is nothing in me that can possibly support the existence of blood."
Both Stain and the cosplayer disappeared, absorbed into Nursery Rhyme.
"Hmm… These souls are… resistant to my power." Nursery Rhyme mused. "Something is shielding them. Was this your doing?"
"I think that you know, very well, that anything that I do against you is utterly pointless." Hans sighed.
"Then why are you still resisting?" Nursery Rhyme said, outstretching her arms. "Join me."
"Yes. Everything that I do is utterly pointless." Hans said. "But I didn't say anything about other people."
A rocket-propelled suit of armor slammed into the villain as a pair of rocket-propelled arms punched Nursery Rhyme in the face. Iida was close behind, his own engine-boosted legs delivering a powerful spin kick.
This time, Nursery Rhyme was actually hit with a physical impact. She was sent into the theater, crashing through a concrete wall and what sounded like many glass doors. However, Hans was much less enthused by this "victory".
After all, would a physical attack really do damage?
Obviously not.
"You okay, Andersen-san?" Iida said, his expression stoic and serious. Despite only having his leg armor equipped, he had still jumped into the fight as fast as he could manage.
"Well… no." Hans said. "I also don't think you actually hurt them."
"What is this? Naturally occurring souls with a significant… conceptual weight? Well, not exactly." Nursery Rhyme said, floating out the wreckage. "But I may have to actually induct them into my reality marble to absorb them."
"This is pro hero Ingenium, requesting backup. A villain with… people-absorbing powers has been spotted-"
Nursery Rhyme plunged into the ground, and suddenly, the landscape was truly transformed. The theater suddenly collapsed into a house of cards, before the landscape within was replaced with nothing but a cold, icy mist.
The mist quickly overtook Iida and Ingenium's forms, before Hans felt them disappear. Quickly, he surrounded himself with the narrative descriptions of his classmates, the narrative weights of the essence of those characters fending off the force trying to absorb him.
"You're caught now." Nursery Rhyme seemed to mutter in the air. "You're surrounded by my reality marble. It's really a marvel that you can even exist outside of it at all, with your pitiful D-rank in territory creation."
Quickly, Hans felt his barrier degrade. His energy was being eroded, but the description of the characters still had power. It was still keeping him out. Keeping him free.
But that energy would wear out, and Nursery Rhyme's influence would seep into him and take his remaining fairy tales.
So what was there to do?
Give up?
Anything that touched her would be absorbed into her reality marble. Eventually, it would happen, even to things that were significant to the narrative. Even All Might, with seven times the narrative significance compared to Hans's classmates, would probably degrade and be absorbed into Nursery Rhyme's world.
"But the opposite is also true, isn't it?" Hans muttered.
If things left her reality marble, then she would grow weaker. Her powers and the physical representation of her reality marble would be smaller, meaning that if Hans was able to rescue everybody from Nursery Rhyme's reality marble before they completely disappeared from the physical world, then she would be powerless.
However, that involved actually entering the reality marble. And with him and his easily-absorbed tales, the only thing that would happen would be Nursery Rhyme suddenly expanding, consuming half the city, taking their energy, and then eventually branching out across the entire world.
So, taking the description of the most narratively significant person he could think of: Midoriya. Hans separated it from his barrier, which immediately buckled from the sudden lack of narrative weight keeping Hans's metaphorical boat afloat.
Then, Hans sighed, and summoned his tablet. His tablet, infused with everything that he had created. The powers of the one hundred and fifty five tales that he had written when he was still truly alive.
"Giving up already?" Nursery Rhyme taunted. "Are you really going to… just give up?"
"Not this time." Hans sighed. "After all, this truly is my problem to deal with."
Those tales couldn't be helping him in this adventure.
Cloaking the tablet with Midoriya's description, Hans first felt the tales disconnect from him. His summons were now trapped inside the tablet, and for the first time in his heroic spirit career, truly separate from him. After all, it was completely divided from him with the conceptual weight of the main character's existence in the narrative that he was now a part of.
Hopefully, this would suffice.
Then, he threw it out as far as he could, hoping that it would remain outside the reality marble.
"Then, are you going to face me without your tales?" Nursery Rhyme mused, looking at Hans with bemusement. "After I digest these souls, I'll expand and take your tales anyways."
"Well, that's the thing, isn't it?" Hans said. "You're not going to be able to take those souls."
"Wha-"
Keeping only a shred of descriptions to himself, Hans let the rest explode into the reality marble. This infused Nursery Rhyme with his encoding of the narrative of this world.
A narrative that viewed him and, by extension, Nursery Rhyme, as foreign objects.
Something that wasn't natural.
As everything went white, Hans sighed as he clutched onto Kirishima, Yaoyorozu, and Ojiro's descriptions, before writing himself a note.
Hopefully, that did something.
…
It was snowing.
It had always been snowing.
It was never not snowing.
How many seconds had it been? How many minutes? How many days? How many months? How many years?
What was the order of these measurements again?
A blue-haired child fought his way through the snow, his arms and white coat wrapped around what seemed to be a stack of paper, which was filled to the margins with random scribbles. The kid was shivering, but an ephemeral blue energy was somehow able to keep him going. Still, the snow was heavy and the blank fog seemed endless.
At last, the child was able to find and climb up a tree. Brushing off some of the snow from the branches, he sat down and huddled in on himself for warmth.
It was cold. It had always been cold. This world was just one great, gray blob. And he was tired of it.
But what was the ream of paper that he was delivering? Why did he wrap it up with his jacket? Unraveling the delicate papers, he saw something sprawled across one page in huge, unruly handwriting.
You are Hans Christian Andersen.
Instantly, the kid's expression soured. Instead of the dull sadness, it became more of a resigned sense of weariness and spite.
"Who the hell opens worldbuilding with the weather?" Hans complained, thinking back to his thought process. Quickly reactivating his noble phantasm and transforming the physical representation of the descriptions that had protected him in this reality marble into something akin to a blue aura.
"Well, thank god I wrote that note. Otherwise, I'd be stuck like that for a while." Hans shrugged, looking at the words swirling around his left arm. Since he was without his tablet, which was apparently still in the physical world, he had to make do with this.
All he had were the roughest effects of his noble phantasm, given the fact that he had literally nowhere to write. And he didn't exactly want to carve the words into his own skin.
"Well, this isn't great. And I presume I'm on a time crunch." Hans muttered. "How does time even flow in here? I was thinking about seconds and years in the wrong order, too. Does that mean that… years are seconds?"
Hans paused for a moment, looking at the falling snowflakes.
"Nah. I would have been degraded by then."
The words coiled around his arms suddenly shrank.
"Okay, that's a pretty clear indication that I'm going to run out of time." Hans sighed. "So, what do I do now?"
The snow did not respond.
"Great." Hans grumbled. "Honestly, are reality marbles complicated enough to have multiple layers or something? If not, then we're all probably just separated by distance."
Hans looked across the blanket of snow that seemingly stretched on forever.
"...What a great time to be short. And to think that somebody at UA thought I could have been a competent hero."
The tree rustled. A bit of snow fell onto his shoulder.
"Oh, man. Maybe I said some sort of trigger word." Hans sighed. "Is this how this reality marble is going to work?"
A tree branch above him shook, and suddenly, the sky darkened. The weather shifted, and the landscape began to bubble. The white snow slowly grew greyer and greyer as a figure approached Hans from quite the distance away, running across the vast expanse of snow like it was nothing but flat ground.
The area around him slowly grew into a city-like structure, but there was one spot that still stood in defiance: the tree that Hans was sitting on.
At last, perched atop one of the buildings, Stain stood.
"Hero?" Stain muttered quietly, unsheathing his katana.
"Can you only say that word?" Hans asked, somehow not surprised in the least. "Is… is this how the reality marble affects vaguely significant characters? Wait, you're a narratively significant character?"
Stain pointed his chipped and battered katana straight at Hans.
"Hero?"
"Well yes, but actually no." Hans sighed.
Stain leapt off the building, and sliced off a good portion of the wilted tree. Hans quickly scrambled off the plant and into the urban environment. The tip that Stain had sliced off fell right next to him, shattering the brick that had formed in place of the snowy ground.
Then, a knife hit his wrist. However, the words that were swirling around his arms shielded him, and the weapon pinged off with a blue spark. However, despite the blow being deflected, Hans felt… weaker. It was like he was less of a self-contained body and more in tune with the reality marble.
In other words, he was insignificant to the narrative as well, and the only thing keeping him afloat here were the pieces of described significance that he had borrowed.
And that borrowed significance could degrade.
"So… what happens to the people that aren't protected in any way?" Hans muttered, his gut slowly twisting in realization.
They could be in any form. They could already be gone. They could have been turned into magical soup, for all Hans knew.
And all of this, really, just started with Hans giving the wraith a match.
"Damn it!" Hans shouted, slamming the pavement with his fist. The impact actually hurt, but there was no blood or bruising. Just another blue flash. Just more weakness.
"Hero…?" the thing that was probably Stain croaked, dropping down and tilting his head. Upon closer examination, this stain actually looked particularly green and scaly. Maybe the cosplayer and Stain had actually become the same entity?
Perhaps narratively, they served the same purpose.
So, he had to make Stain remember his own name.
..The problem was, Hans didn't know Stain's name. Great.
Therefore, the only way for Stain to actually remember his name was for him to recall his identity. Then, hopefully, Stain would know the name of the lizard EMIYA cosplayer. All the while, the only thing making it possible was probably Stain's narrative significance.
And what was his identity? Stain. The Hero Killer. And judging by the alley conversation way before Hans was even admitted to UA, he was also obsessed with what being a hero was.
"Hero!" the Stain creature yelled, throwing more knives at Hans. Quickly, Hans tried to open the door to an apartment complex to hide, only to realize that the buildings were actually solid concrete.
"She can do a world ending plot, but she doesn't know what a building is." Hans sighed. "What even are wraiths these days."
So, there was no running or hiding.
There was only one way out.
Roasting the shit out of Stain until he remembered how stupid he was.
"What the hell is it with you and your obsession with heroes?"
Then, soundlessly, Stain appeared behind Hans.
"I knew you'd do that." Hans muttered, immediately running forwards as fast as his short legs could carry him. The slash cleaved the flowing end of his white lab coat, causing the fabric to tear. Stumbling forwards, Hans tried to do some kind of parkour roll to minimize damage. It didn't exactly work, but at least the impact didn't register as damage to his remaining scraps of narrative significance.
"A hero is something that does the right thing, then?" Hans shouted, springing away from stain. The wintery air pierced his lungs and made every breath feel like breathing in little shards of ice, and speaking itself was a chore. But being the unfit teenager he was, Hans quickly felt winded. Some muscle below his lungs started to scream its protests, making each step feel like wading through lead.
Even this was too slow.
Panting, Hans chanced a look back. But somehow, Stain didn't move. The figure stood completely still, his red scarf flowing in the breeze dramatically as the moon shone down dramatically, casting a long shadow that reached Hans's feet.
Did… did Hans just have to keep talking?
Was Stain actually listening?
"And, by your definition, a hero is somebody that does work for justice simply because he believes in it." Hans wheezed, leaning against a wall. Man, he really was out of shape. Just running what seemed to be a block and a half totally exhausted him.
"But then again, who defines justice? Who gives that body the authority to determine what justice is? Is there ever a system that treats everyone fairly? That is absolutely correct? Is your perception of justice only about the results, not how we get there?"
Stain's figure twitched. Adjusting his glasses, Hans could see his hand tightening around the katana.
But Hans decided to keep talking anyways.
"How absolutely juvenile. To think that beating the bad guy is the only thing that matters. You do know that even violent consequences like the death penalty aren't actually deterring people from committing crimes, right? You think a year or two in jail for charges of villainy is going to stop them?"
"...Hero." Stain declared, before charging forwards. Hans looked to the left and to the right for an escape venue from the dramatically approaching villain. Obviously, Stain was just toying with Hans, considering the fact that previously, the situation that had lead him to attempt to run had been started by Stain appearing behind him like a generic overpowered villain.
Alleyways were a bad idea since they were dead ends, and Hans… basically had no way of fending Stain off.
"Okay, so if I say something that you don't agree with, you attack me. Got it." Hans sighed, "So what the hell do I do now?"
Stain's katana was now scraping the roadways ominously, leaving a deep gorge in what Nursery Rhyme probably expected to be cement.
Ah, to hell with it.
Hans was going to speak his mind. If he died, so be it. There was, quite literally, nothing else to do.
"Of course, you tout All Might as your one true hero! As your lord and savior!" Hans said dramatically, waving his arms around in the air. Stain stopped at the mention of All Might.
"But fundamentally, what does All Might do? Stop criminals so that they're temporarily restrained in the legal system?"
Stain picked up the pace once more.
"Deter potential criminals by increasing the chance of failure?"
Stain had already crossed half the street. His katana was actually producing sparks as it scraped against the road.
"Do you realize how bad that sounds, when most of your society doesn't commit crimes only because they might mess up doing it?"
Stain ran up into a jump, his two hands coming together for an overhead cleave, aiming to split Hans in half. Quickly, Hans dove to the side as the katana slammed down into the concrete. The impact did not destroy the katana. Clearly, things weren't quite realistic in this reality marble.
Hans felt his coattails snag in Stain's swipe of a hand, and before he knew it, he was being dragged towards him, who dropped his katana and reached to grab Hans's throat.
"This entire system of heroism, of stopping and capturing the villain being the end goal, is utterly childish. And I can't believe that you subscribed to it." Hans gurgled, his eyes slowly bulging as his airway was slowly constricted.
Still, he continued to speak. The creature's eyes looked into Hans's blue ones. They seemed so inhuman. So empty.
But it showed anger. Which meant that something was getting through. However, Hans's remaining descriptions were being drained further, faster. To prevent death by suffocation, the words had now surged to form a barrier around his neck.
"The very fact that the crime rate is so high says something about this!"
Stain kneed Hans in the stomach. Hans's body tried to double over, but Stain's grip was like iron. Hans wasn't going to be able to move.
"People did still try to kill people with knives or other easily available tools of destruction like cars randomly before quirks were a thing, at a rate similar to our crime rate! This means that rather than quirks and villainy being the problem, we are!"
Stain released one hand, and punched Hans straight in the face. His reading glasses flew across the pavement and shattered into blue sparks.
"Face it, heroism that serves such a broken system is a lie! It's something that treats the symptoms, and not the cause, and we as a society are told to ignore that fact by treating the cough drops that heroes are as role models" Hans shouted defiantly, looking straight at Stain's increasingly angry eyes. Slowly, red veins crept across the blank white eyeballs. The color was the same as Stain's scarf.
Blood red.
"And you. Need. To. Wake. Up!" Hans shouted, before… weakly slapping at Stain's hand, which was still restrained around his throat.
Nothing happened.
Hans was just held against the wall, his barriers slowly weakening. Maybe this was really it. In the end, it felt like a lazy copout. This was just an easy way to kill off a side character, wasn't it?
The only thing he could do… was speak.
"You can't just kill me, or whatever problem you think you're facing, and say that you've succeeded!" Hans wheezed out. "It isn't as simple as that! What, do you think you're killing the evil dragon that haunts society? Well, this evil dragon is made out of the constituent members of that society! And your definition of 'fake heroes' do what they do because they think it's right, as well! They should get paid enough to eat so they can do their hero work full time, and they're not looking for brands! The brands are looking for them!"
With a roar, Stain lifted Hans and slammed him into the concrete. His narrative description still took the hit, but he felt like already half of it had gone. If this kept up for long, Hans would be absorbed by the reality marble.
"And the concept of heroes doesn't exist, anyways! All we have are well-intentioned people who don't know what the fuck they're doing! Does Siegfried killing the dragon change the fact that peasants are going to be ruthlessly taxed and exploited by their feudal lords? Does Jeanne d'Arc's efforts of fighting against England really constitute heroism, or is it just nations conflicting with each other? Nobody's a true hero, and everybody's simply picking a side and choosing to support a status quo.
"...Hero!" Stain grumbled defiantly, pointing a knife at Hans's throat.
"Nobody will ever be a true hero! Even All Might is just a benevolent fool!" Hans shouted, desperately kicking at Stain's feet. They didn't budge.
But Stain… didn't continue with stabbing down. Instead of increasing anger, his eyes went blank. Seizing the opportunity, Hans channeled a little of his mana into Stain, and with a blue flash, some clarity was restored into his eyes.
"So, what are you saying is right, then?" Stain said, his voice low and ominous, but slowly returning to normality. "What is right? What is the right course of action?"
"Nobody knows." Hans chuckled. "Everyone on this blasted planet is just leading their life with what they deems as rights!"
"That's impossible. There are some greats in history whose contributions can't be denied." Stain said. Slowly, his figure shrank a little, his skin growing darker and a more natural shade. It seemed as if Nursery Rhyme's influence was leaving him.
Finally.
"What, do you think that any regime in human history has ever been without flaw and prejudice? Do you think any so-called hero actually solved their share of problems before leaving an area?"
"All Might created this era!" Stain said, almost forcing the words out. "This era of incredible prosperity and peace, and you're going to call that a mistake?"
"Well, then, what happens when All Might 'leaves the area' and dies? Will he be replaced by somebody that is as strong as him? I don't think Endeavor has the attitude or morality to do that job."
"Endeavor is a fake." Stain spat out vehemently. However, his expression was still dull and centered, staring forwards at the fake horizon of the reality marble.
"Well, I think he's a corrupt bastard as well, and he even tries engaging in selective breeding to create heroes to surpass All Might." Hans shrugged, thinking back on his conversation with Todoroki and quirk marriages.
"Some people might argue that his actions are for stabilizing hero society to create capable heroes in the next generation, but his motives are probably all personal. After all, being number two forever isn't going to stick well with anyone. But back to All Might. After he retires, society isn't going to have a good time, and people might get plunged back into the dark ages again, since villains certainly haven't decreased in number, although the crime rate apparently has."
Stain fell silent. Again, he seemed nonchalant, but Hans's mana was certainly going somewhere. Pushing what little bit of noble phantasm activation he could achieve without his tablet, Hans continued to speak.
"In the end, we're all confused people that don't know how things should go. You may think that finding what you call a 'true hero' and cleansing the earth of unworthy heroes is the path of action to take, but really, what are you achieving with that? Are you actually changing society, or are you just creating more hero deficits to be filled with other fake heroes? All of us are just fools like All Might, trying to do the right thing, but not really thinking about all the consequences."
"I… stopped…" Stain muttered indiscernibly. Hans finally observed a visual change in expression, other than the blank stare forwards. Instead, there was a bit of a spark in his eyes.
"What?" Hans asked, unable to read the small lip movements.
"I… stopped… because of you."
Then, Stain's skin began to boil, and Hans was finally able to clamber away on his back as the wraith retracted its grip, beginning to whimper and shrink in on itself.
"W-what is happ… happening?" Stain's face said for a second, before it was overtaken by a wave of scales. The attire on Stain began to shift, and even his eyes began to look more and more reptilian. The katana on the ground shot back into his hand and widened into a chinese-style one-edged sword, which was the shape of EMIYA's signature weapon. Trying to get back up, Hans watched in exasperation as Stain was presumably woken up and the wraith shifted towards its second phase.
The lizard wearing EMIYA's outfit screeched, before another sword appeared on its left hand.
Well, that was a thing.
"This really isn't going to be simple, is it." Hans sighed.
It was time to roast a cosplayer that Hans knew nothing about. Compared to him, Stain was the easy one.
And how the hell was this guy a narratively significant character?
…
AN: I got a 2-day break in addition to the weekend, so we're doing okay. This stuff is going to take a while. It'll be filled with roasts and character insights that I'll try to make entertaining, so hopefully, y'all will like it.
Well, time to grind up for "finals" season (this semester I really just have 3 more tests left)
New link: discord . gg / s2uFUydRVd
Please do the stat things (comment, favorite, follow). It helps my ego. I need it more than ever lol. I do be shameless like that.
-SpiritOfErebus