I do not own Black Clover or any of its characters.
Offers and Propositions
Dane laughed as he stuffed his face. Around him, Vanessa, Charmy, Asta, Charmy, Luck, Magna, Gordon, and Grey were all doing the same, as was the other member of their squad that only Asta, and probably Yami, had known about, Henry. He had a condition that absorbed people's mana, so he couldn't be around them, but he'd always lived in their hideout, which was Henry's house, and it was his magic that was constantly reshaping the hideout. Currently, as his condition drained their mana, the food they were eating, created by Charmy's Head Chef sheep, was restoring their mana just as quickly, and Henry was using the mana he absorbed to control the hideout as their means of transportation. Specifically, he'd transformed it into a massive bull that was charging toward the capital.
"Hey Charmy, can you have the Head Chef make Raya a plate?" Dane asked.
"Of course," Charmy smiled, kissing him, as she had not left her adult form since they met up, the Head Chef making it easy for her to remain an adult.
A moment later, Raya had joined them, taking a few minutes to cling to Dane out of relief that he had survived, then began to gorge herself as well. Henry, who was incapable of speaking faster than one word every two seconds, greeted her, and Raya returned the greeting as an old friend, stating that she'd been worried about him.
"You've met him?" Dane asked.
"Yeah," Raya smiled. "I found him while I was exploring the hideout one time."
Dane nodded, smiling, and they returned to their meals. Then, Dane and Luck both stopped, staring at the wall ahead of them.
"Asta," Luck said, Asta pausing. "There are three elves in that town ahead."
"It's Hecairo," Dane informed them, standing. "The greatest city of the Common Realm."
"Let's go!" Asta nodded.
Henry nodded and turned the Raging Black Bull, his name for their hideout when transformed, toward the elves. One of them formed a massive wall around the town, but the bull smashed through it instantly. Then, Henry transformed it from a quadrupedal bull that could charge across the kingdom in minutes into a towering bipedal combat form, like a minotaur, and its attacks, mostly punches, began to obliterate the destroyed remnants of the town still further as Henry fought the elves. While he did, Vanessa, Charmy, and Grey all worked together to evacuate the townspeople, Grey freeing anyone trapped in Lugner's ice or trapped under debris or by the stone formations one of the elves had used to attack the town.
The three elves, one of which was the Purple Orcas Vice Captain, the real Xerx Lugner, began to try to fight them, but Vanessa had already placed Rouge on the Raging Black Bull's shoulder, allowing her to protect their hideout from anything, all the while continuing to shovel the Head Chef's food into her mouth. And then, Henry had created a trio of cannons to allow Magna, Luck, and Gordon to fire their Flame, Lightning, and Poison magics from the Bull into the three elves, Henry strengthening the blasts. And then, as the elves began to combine their magic into a massive sphere, preparing to cast a spell that would wipe out either the Raging Black Bull or the town, or possibly both, it was Asta's turn. And a moment later, they'd fired Asta from a cannon at the elves, allowing him to slash through their attack before slamming his swords into the elves directly. And just like that, it was over. Except, it wasn't. Dane crashed down beside Asta as a dark portal spread through the air, dropping Valtos, Sally, and Rades to the ground off to the side.
"You three," Asta breathed as Dane's hands pressed to the ground. "What do you want?"
"Ah, the Black Bulls again," Rades smirked. "I'm here for my revenge."
"Suit yourself," Dane accepted, hands clenching against the ground.
"And you're going to help me get it!" Rades finished, Dane stopping his attack.
"Excuse me?" Dane asked.
"Oh no!" Grey wailed. "It's them!"
"They're the people who tore down our hideout!" Gordon warned, speaking clearly for the first time since Dane had known him.
"Oh, is that so!?" Charmy shouted. "Then you must be the ones responsible for the deaths of my poor innocent vegetables!"
"Charmy, stand back please," Dane spoke up.
Charmy hesitated, then complied. As she did, Dane stood, staring at the three of them.
"Tell us exactly what happened after the battle at the hideout," Dane instructed. "What did Licht do?"
"He tricked me!" Rades seethed. "He tricked all of us! Just so that he could use us to serve his own purposes, and then he threw us away like trash as soon as he didn't need us anymore! He should pay for what he's done, and I won't rest until we even the score!"
"Rades, how did Licht revive the elves?" Dane asked.
Rades growled in annoyance, then nodded. "The Magic Stones. There was some tablet in the middle of nowhere that he stuck all the Magic Stones in. And once he stuck the last one in place, the reincarnation spell absorbed the lifeforce of all of the human members of the Eye of the Midnight Sun so that it could revive the elves. We three only survived because of my Wraith Magic."
Dane nodded, considering. "We'll secure the capital first, then I'll go and see about this tablet. Maybe removing the stones will end the spell."
"It's possible," Vanessa agreed.
"If we use Sally's Dark Magic Items to enhance Valtos's Spacial Magic, you'll be able to transport this moving base of yours pretty quickly," Rades explained. "We can be there before ya know it. You're on your way to the Royal Capital, too, aren't you? It sounds like we all have the same objective here, so we might as well work together! Not a bad deal, right?"
"Judging by all the mana, it feels like all the elves are trying to gather in the capital, too," Luck spoke up after everyone had been silent for so long.
"Wait a minute," Magna said. "It's kinda sketchy to me that this guy suddenly showed up asking us for our help."
Asta returned his newer sword to his Grimoire and walked forward in silence.
Rades let out a laugh, extending his hand. "Well, looks like we've got ourse-"
"No way!" Asta shouted, clotheslining Rades across the throat and smashing him to the ground.
"What the hell is wrong with you!?" Rades demanded.
"You think we're after the same thing!?" Asta snapped. "You better think again! All we're tryin' to do is protect everyone! We're not doin' it to get revenge! And what's worse..." Asta lunged, yanking Rades' arm behind him in an armlock, "you're the guy who attacked all those innocent people in the capital! Did you think we forgot about that!?" He spun suddenly, switching to pulling Rades' legs up behind Rades nearly to his head. "'Cause we didn't! And you have the nerve to ask us for our help!? You're barkin' up the wrong tree, pal!" Asta switched to bending Rades backward over his shoulders. "You don't deserve revenge, you dummy! You need to make up for what you did! And you can start off by helpin' us save the Clover Kingdom!"
"Are you kidding me!?" Rades shouted, suddenly lying on his back with Asta holding one of his arms up along his body, Asta's legs across Rades' chest, locking his elbow. "There's no way I'm gonna do that!"
"Does it look like I'm playin' around to you!?" Asta demanded.
"Yes, Asta, it does," Dane said flatly.
"No arguments!" Asta shouted. "We're in a hurry here, so help us get to the capital, right now!"
Dane sighed, turning to Vanessa. "He never changes, does he?"
"Nope," Vanessa smiled. "Nothing ever gets him down."
"And he never takes anything seriously," Dane smirked, then looked toward the capital. "There are going to be a lot of them. And a lot of them will be stronger than Luck."
"We'll be able to handle it," Vanessa promised. "So, what made you so desperate to protect Mimosa that you were willing to sacrifice your arms?"
"She's my friend," Dane shrugged. "Why? You hoping I'm trying to corrupt her?"
Vanessa snorted. "Corrupting people is my job. Your job is to simply enjoy the freedom to stick it wherever you like."
Dane snorted, just as all three of the former Eye of the Midnight Sun pawns agreed to join them, largely on account of Charmy's Head Chef's food. Except, as they did, Dane's head snapped around, his impulses suddenly roaring through his blood. Far in the distance, before Castle Clover, Dane could sense it. Yami was fighting, and only barely holding his own.
"Go," Vanessa said, recognizing the light in his eyes. "We'll meet up with you soon."
Dane nodded, and stepped forward, kissing her, then turned and kissed Charmy as well. Then, he formed himself Diamond Metal armor, which Raya immediately possessed, having fully refilled her magic with Charmy's food. Then, they were off, streaking through the sky like a shooting star. However, even at Raya's top speed, it took them longer to reach the castle than they'd have liked. By the time they arrived, one of the towers of the castle belonging to the Silva family had already been obliterated in a battle against an elf wielding magic involving compasses. However, as the final, massive compass faded, Dane grinned. Noelle had won with a new spell, a suit of Water Magic armor fit for a princess and a lance with the front half being a vortex of Water Magic. She hovered over the ground, evidently able to fly with it, but on the floor below her were her three siblings. Solid was still wounded from his battle against Noelle in the Royal Knights exam, and the elf Noelle had defeated had wounded Nebra with some attack through the abdomen, and had wounded Nozel with three matching wounds through his torso.
However, just as Noelle turned to her siblings, six more elves appeared around the tower, all hovering in the air like Noelle and glaring at her. However, before Dane could intervene, Zora did, catching the first elf to attack by surprise before beginning to give the three more arrogant Silva siblings advice in his own cruel, insulting way while the House Silva attendant that Zora had brought to heal the wounded began to treat Nebra. Dane nodded to himself, and he and Raya diverted toward House Vermillion's home, where Dane could sense Mimosa, her brother, and En closing in on the elves there. Kirsch's magic had spread throughout the castle in order to allow them to rescue as many people as they could. However, just as a group of civilians escaped, one of the elves found Mimosa and the others. Dane dove, Raya carefully teleporting them into the room, but keeping them out of sight, both she and Dane suppressing their power to hide themselves within Kirsch's cherry blossom illusion.
"Hey there," the elf, a male with blonde hair in a fade and a kind smile, greeted them. "Workin' hard, huh?"
"David!" Mimosa gasped.
"Nope, sorry," the elfe said, hand still raised in greeting. "My name's Baval. Relax. Why do you guys look so angry? Sorry for bargin' in, but all I wanted to do was track you guys down and say a quick hello. If I was trying to kill you, then you would already be dead. So there's no reason to get all defensive."
"Tell us what you're really after, elf!" Kirsch snapped.
"Oh, not much," Baval smiled. "But I can catch you up on the details. If you haven't figured it out, my friends and I have been reincarnated with much stronger magic than you possess. And now we've come here to pay the royals a visit. You can sense it, too, right? You know, the fact that something even more powerful is heading over here as we speak. Not much point evacuating the castle. Either way, you're all going to die. So you might as well surrender at this point. I'm pretty formidable, but the rest of us are tough as well. Man, this takes me back. I can't wait to see everybody."
"I won't let you hurt anyone else!" Mimosa declared. "We'll defeat you no matter what!"
"I do admire your determination, but it's too late now," Baval smiled. "Once we take care of your king, this invasion's as good as over with. We sent one of our most qualified people to deal with him, too."
"He'll be fine," Dane said, stepping out of the cherry blossom petals and draping an arm around Baval's shoulders.
"Dane!" Mimosa gasped.
Dane nodded to her in greeting. "Listen, Baval, you sound like a nice person. And I don't sense any true hostile intentions from you. You haven't killed a single person, have you?"
"No, I haven't," Baval shook his head. "There's no point. Once he gets here, he'll deal with everything personally."
"I know," Dane nodded. "He defeated me and two others of our strongest single-handedly without even being fully awake. But for now, we're discussing you. I don't want to hurt anyone. My impulses aside, I hate being a bad person. But I need you to understand that I cannot allow you to continue possessing this body. You know the pain of losing friends, so you understand how the friends of the person you're possessing feel. I won't pretend to understand your pain, and I won't talk about what's fair. What happened to you and your friends was terrible. It was evil. But not all humans are like that. Can you honestly say that all elves are good people?"
Baval frowned. "We would never do something like that."
"Really?" Dane asked, walking over to stand beside Mimosa. "So you're telling me that there weren't any elves that wanted to strike first against humanity? Licht didn't have to convince anyone to try to live alongside humans? Everyone simply accepted humans by default?"
Baval frowned. "Well...no."
"But I wasn't talking about attacking an entire species," Dane said. "What I meant was, were there any elves who were bad people. Criminals, cruel, bullies, anything."
"Well, of course there were," Baval frowned.
"Exactly," Dane nodded. "You elves have been judging all humans by the standard of whoever attacked your people. But not all humans are like that. Think about it. There was one, wasn't there? At least one? I think Licht, or at least the person who was posing as him, mentioned it when we met the first time. Licht was meant to marry a human princess, wasn't he? And she was pregnant?"
Baval's eyes widened.
"Did she betray you all?" Dane asked. "Was she a bad person?"
"No," Baval said, fists clenching. "She was murdered along with the rest of us."
"But that's exactly the point," Dane said. "It wasn't all humans who betrayed the elves. It was a small number of them. We're not all purely evil any more than all elves are purely good."
Baval stared at the ground. "It doesn't matter."
"I think it does," Dane said. "Let me show you something."
Baval watched as Dane knelt, placing a hand to the ground before raising it, a replica of Baval's body forming from the floor, made entirely from marble. "You can create marble statues?"
"No," Dane said. "I can alter anything I touch on a molecular level." He set his hand on the statue, and in a wave starting from his hand, the statue transformed into grass, then diamond, then wood, then stone, then back to marble. "I can turn it into a living body as well, but in order for it to be alive, it would require a soul and a bit of DNA to work with. I could pull from your host body, not enough for lasting injuries, but enough to work with, and recreate your host body, which I assume is a reincarnated version of your own body."
"Why are you telling me this?" Baval asked.
"Because if coexistence is possible, it could only be by ending your possession of your current host, and then placing your soul in a new body to begin a new life," Dane said. "Not by stealing a body, but by being gifted one."
Baval's eyes widened. "You could do that?"
"I don't have a spell that can, but I might know someone who can," Dane said. "And if not, there's another person who might know a way."
"And you would...be willing to?" Baval asked. "Why? We elves have already killed many of your people."
"Yes, you have," Dane nodded. "I won't lie, it's very likely that the vast majority of humanity wouldn't accept the elves. But that's because they don't know what happened. They've never been told your side of the story. They were raised believing that the elves were monsters who were wiped out by a hero, because whoever committed that crime wanted humanity to believe it. If the elves told the world what had happened honestly, explained what had happened to them, and then left the Clover Kingdom, there's a good chance that you would be left alone. We wouldn't have to wipe each other out. We could start over. Whoever attacked you is long dead by now. We have our share of criminals and psychopaths, we have humans who are cruel and hateful, but there are so many more who are kind and simply want to live in peace. You don't have to be our enemy."
Baval stared at the ground, then sighed, smiling tiredly. "You really are a good man. I can sense those murderous impulses of yours, but even with them, you're a better man than we deserve. None of us even considered that we might be judging humanity as a whole too harshly. But I'm sorry. It's too late. He's arrived. It's over now."
Dane sighed, nodding. "I'm sorry, too. I really wish we could have found a way. Still, you and I don't have to fight. Since he's here, you can leave us to him."
Baval nodded. "Yeah. Out of respect for what you said, and how you thought to help, I won't kill anyone, including all of you."
Dane nodded, and sighed, allowing the replica body he'd made to return to the floor.
"How unsightly," Kirsch huffed. "How can such a truly ugly person ever be worthy of respect? Honestly, the fact that a disgusting and ugly person like Dane is even standing in the home of the magnificently beautiful House Vermillion in the first place is-"
Mimosa slapped Kirsch across the face, putting enough force behind the blow to send him staggering away. "You shut your mouth! Dane is a million times the person you are! The only person in this room who doesn't deserve any respect is you! You're so self centered that you think literally everyone is below you! You're disgusting and creepy! No one can stand to be around you!"
Dane blinked in surprise, then set a hand on Mimosa's shoulder. "Let him say what he wants. It doesn't mat-"
"No!" Mimosa snapped, shrugging his hand off. "I refuse to allow him to hurl baseless insults at the person who risked his life and sacrificed both of his arms so that I would walk away from that fight without a scratch! I should have died in that dungeon! There's no way I should have been able to make it out alive, but you protected me!" She stopped, her eyes sinking sadly. "I can't protect you. But I can stand up for you! So I won't let my brother say anything bad about you, because you're my hero!"
Dane's eyes widened. "I'm...what?"
"You're my hero," Mimosa repeated, smiling. "You're constantly protecting me. When you fought Mars, when the nobles and royals were all insulting me, in Kiten, and especially in that dungeon. You've been protecting me for as long as I've known you."
Dane sighed, smiling. "I suppose I have, haven't I. I just never wanted to see you hurt. You're too kind for that. You're like your flowers. You exist to bring joy and beauty to the world. You brighten the world around you."
Mimosa blushed slightly but smiled. However, it fell as Dane sighed, looking up at the ceiling. "Please be careful, Dane."
"I will," Dane promised. "My captain and Captain Jack are already there, so I won't be alone."
Mimosa nodded, hugging Dane. "I'll treat your scars once things are settled."
Dane smiled, returning the hug. "I'll hold you to that. I have a lot of them this time."
"Less than after Vetto and the Forest of Witches," Mimosa smiled. "And you had better not get any on the level of the Forest of Witches."
"I won't," Dane said, releasing her as Raya once again possessed his armor. "Let's go, Raya."
Then, they vanished in a flash of light, reappearing outside and heading for Yami.
"I can feel that," Raya spoke up as they flew, her tone betraying her grin.
"She was the one you wouldn't say, wasn't she?" Dane asked.
"Yes," Raya acknowledged. "And now you see why I wouldn't put the idea in your head."
Dane nodded, and a moment later, they flew down to land beside Yami.
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