ushernet Explanations and a new job?.
Explanations and a new job?.
Apologies for the delay, I released a 7k-word chapter on (P)(A)(T).
Well, as always, if anyone wants to support me or just read 3/7 chapters ahead of my two stories, that's possible with my (P)(A)(T), if not, I still appreciate you reading my stories.
That said, good night (day, it's 7:15 in my country) and happy reading!
[...]---[...]
POV: Salem.
"Tyrian has been captured." Cinder's voice trembled from the Scroll in my hands.
I tapped my fingers on the arm of my throne for a moment before asking questions.
"By whom?" One of Ozma's pawns, probably, but which one?
The one with the scythe who drank too much? The blonde woman with the whip? Or... I blinked, failing to recall any other pawn of my ex-husband's who was truly important enough for me to be informed.
There was also the one from the island where the relic of creation was, wasn't there?... Morningwood or something like that, in my time surnames weren't so strange...
It seems Ozma had few allies in this incarnation of his.
"I... I don't know, mistress." Cinder's voice interrupted my thoughts. "It's someone we had no information on, a man, he appeared out of nowhere... I even thought he might be one of ours..." There was a certain confusion in her voice.
"One of ours? Why?" I prompted the response. Cinder didn't hesitate to voice her thoughts.
"He... The man had an artifact that emitted an aura similar to your Grimm, my mistress..." Cinder explained before her tone lowered, as if she wasn't certain of her next words. "He... I think he had magic too..."
I slightly widened my eyes at the girl's words.
The part about the artifact with an aura similar to the Grimm didn't surprise me; it wouldn't be the first time someone was born with a Semblance that could mimic the aura of the Grimm, but the part about the magic did.
Cinder's magical senses came from her powers as a newly born Maiden, which meant they were at best mediocre and at worst dreadful.
Especially since she only had half the power of the Fall Maiden. Her magical senses were equivalent to those of a newborn baby, half-deaf, half-blind, and mute... But even with all that, she still thought this man had magic?
How much magic did this man have to make Cinder feel his magic?
Had Ozma somehow managed to regain his magic? Or was it something else? A mutant child of a Maiden? An experiment like the ones Watts did with some of the Grimm?
"What did this man look like and what was his name?" I ordered. Cinder did better than giving me a physical description; she sent me a video of the man fighting, or rather, destroying some Grimms and Tyrian.
He looked somewhat like Ozma in his youth, his original body. Black hair, light brown eyes, a muscular physique of someone who lived for fighting, only the skin color was lighter than that of my ex-husband.
A clone, perhaps? An embryo created with the DNA of a Maiden as mother? I wouldn't be surprised if Ozma had preserved and kept some piece of his original body...
Although from the recording, I couldn't tell if the man had magic or not, I could recognize runic alphabet, even one I had never seen...
"Did this man look in your direction?" I asked Cinder, who nodded with a strange look as she remembered.
"Yes... He seemed to focus specifically on me for a second before looking away." That's what I thought... "Did he sense the Maiden's magic within me?" She asked worriedly. At least she wasn't foolish to think the man had focused on her because of her body.
"Leave the Vale, retreat and continue your plan with intermediaries, do not approach this man." I ordered. Even with the powers of the Fall Maiden, Cinder would be destroyed against a real magic user.
As much as Ozma and I could sense magic, this didn't apply to Maidens; only a Maiden could sense another Maiden, and that only when they were close... But the child of a Maiden, as much as I had never tested, perhaps could too...
After ending the call with Cinder, I stood up and went to the window facing the Vale.
I also didn't worry about Tyrian leaking any information; the man was as fanatic as he was insane, even if somehow they managed to make him talk, he didn't know much anyway.
Tyrian never cared about any plan Cinder might be planning; if he could kill and follow my orders, that was enough for him. At most, even if they could make him talk, they would get Cinder's name and a description of her face, by which point she would already be far from the Vale.
I drummed my fingers on the edge of the window as I watched the moon slowly rise in the sky, which like everything else, was just a remnant of a bygone era...
"Devas..." I murmured. A name that reminded me of names from my time... How curious...
It seems I'll need to pay a visit to my ex-husband's kingdom in the near future...
[...]
POV: Devas Asura.
What I did to Tyrian could be considered worse than death; I turned him into... something else... I wasn't exactly sure. It was like a fusion of a Grimm with a Hallucination.@@@@
I had tried to create hallucinations before, but I hadn't been very successful. There always seemed to be something missing for me to finally achieve it, and I didn't want to use the method the Codex Umbra indicated, which was basically driving someone to pure insanity to generate hallucinations.
I had some varying degrees of success after practicing with the Bone Helm, mimicking the hands it created, but it was still just me shaping my nightmare energy, not really something "alive" like hallucinations or Grimms, which had instincts, mimicking life.
Real success only came after I killed the first Grimm yesterday; then my nightmare energy finally seemed to have found a "physical mold" to shape itself more easily.
If hallucinations were something more spiritual, malice and negative emotions in ethereal form, the "spiritual mold," so to speak, Grimms were the opposite, something physical, malice and negative emotions in a corporeal construct that instinctively mimicked fauna, or in this case, the missing "physical mold."
Now that I had both "molds," even without doing anything, my nightmare energy had started to shape into a fusion between a Grimm and a Hallucination, something that was ethereal yet corporeal... Not a Grimm, nor a Hallucination, but something more, that could exist both ethereally within my spiritual realm and corporeally whenever I ordered them to emerge... A living shadow... A Nightmare that could exist in the real world...
These Nightmares took various forms, some like the hallucinations, mimicking insects with some Grimm characteristics, others just like Grimms, resembling Beowolves, Ursas, Boarbatusks, even that giant snake whose name I didn't know.
The only thing all Nightmares had in common, besides the pitch-black tone of their fur, skin, or carapace, was the dark gray deer-skull-shaped mask on their heads... Something even Tyrian had...
As for Tyrian, his case was something different... I hadn't come up with the idea of pulling his mind into mine out of nowhere, but it was one of the unfinished spells from the Codex Umbra, which involved driving the target insane using nightmare energy over a long period to suppress them and turn them into a Shadow Puppet.
I had time, but I didn't have the inclination to spend my time on that, so I took advantage of the fact that Tyrian had no way to protect himself from the nightmare energy and forcibly suppressed him using my own nightmare energy along with the Bone Helm.
Still, the "transformation," so to speak, into a Shadow Puppet would have taken days, maybe more if I had just thrown my nightmare energy at Tyrian... Then the idea came: What if I threw Tyrian into my nightmare energy? Into the mud lake where it was more concentrated? Its epicenter?...
Maybe if he had Aura, he could have defended himself, resisted, and not been pulled into my spiritual realm. After all, the humans and faunus of this world have been fighting Grimm for centuries, perhaps complete millennia. Even though they didn't have nightmare energy, both their bodies and souls were so accustomed to Grimm, their malice, that they could defend themselves.
Just as Jaune and the others seemed to have seen the black hands of the Bone Helm, even without having nightmare energy, Tyrian might have tried to defend himself if his Aura had been intact... Which it wasn't...
Without Aura?... He was less than defenseless... So defenseless that he lost everything that made him himself...
"I'll only use this on those who deserve it..." I spoke aloud to nothing, not expecting a response...
I wasn't the judge, nor the jury or executioner, but I had decided long ago that I would bear the consequences of my actions, whatever they may be...
... I got one when the eyes of the Nightmares appeared in my shadow and looked at me awaiting orders, one of them was purple...
"Sins are sins..." I would bear all of mine... No matter what they were and how heavy they would be...
[...]
"You took a while, did something happen?" - Ozpin... Ozma, from what Tyrian had told me, asked with a slightly concerned and curious tone.
I didn't respond immediately, but instead looked around the front of the school. Beacon was beautiful, I couldn't deny that, especially at dawn; its white, gray, and light blue walls bathed in the first rays of sunlight made everything even more beautiful.
A fairy tale castle, that was the first description I had given the school, and I don't think it would change, especially after what I had discovered...
"No, I just thought it best to take a walk through the forest before returning," I replied to the supposedly immortal man. He had mentioned something about a curse, hadn't he? Tyrian didn't know exactly what it was, just that Ozpin died and came back after a while in another body.
I'll guess it was the fault of the gods of this world and leave it at that.
"I needed some time to organize my thoughts," I explained, briefly glancing at Ozpin before turning my gaze to the morning sky.
I could feel Ozpin's gaze on me for a moment before the man nodded slightly.
"You managed to make Tyrian talk." It wasn't a question, but rather a statement.
"Yes," I confirmed the statement and nodded towards the school, starting to walk. Ozpin matched my steps one by one on my right side.
"I imagine there were some revealing pieces of information," he commented with a serious tone, but I could sense the amusement in his voice. Funny, how our roles reversed in a few hours, wasn't it?
"Some yes, others I already had a hunch about," I replied, realizing he hadn't asked me how I made Tyrian talk. "He mentioned 'her' name." Much more than just that...
"Salem," Ozpin said the name of the Queen of Grimm. "I was going to tell you about her when you came back, but it seems it won't be necessary anymore," he sighed lightly.
"Would you really have told me?" There was another question within that sentence: Would you trust me enough to tell me?
Talking to Ozpin after I found out he was ancient... Perhaps much older than all the existing kingdoms in this world currently, was... Different...
Tyrian didn't know much about the man, just what Salem found useful to inform him, which wasn't much, but it was enough for me to know that the man in front of me was probably the oldest being I had ever spoken to in my entire life...
I didn't know the man's exact age to claim he was older than Deerclops, but I didn't exactly have a conversation with the deer, but at least older than Serafall, that he was.
Ozpin looked at me for some time before responding.
"Yes, I would have," he said, before retrieving my cellphone from his pocket and handing it to me. He had kept it all night.
I tossed the cellphone into the VoidBag as Ozpin continued.
"I won't claim to be the best judge of character, I've made many mistakes in that regard and will make many more. But in this case, I don't think I'm wrong to trust you," he explained, stopping next to the main fountain at the entrance and looking at his own reflection in the water... At least of his current body.
"Why?" I asked. There were reasons I could think of, but I wanted to hear what Ozpin would say.
"I didn't have time to watch all the videos, I don't think I would without at least a few months," he spoke lightly. "So I saw small pieces here and there of some of your broadcasts. One of them told me everything I needed to know about you," he looked at the water for a few more seconds before taking a coin from his pocket and tossing it into the fountain.
I watched the golden coin sink into the water until it collided with the pile of hundreds, maybe thousands of coins at the bottom.
"Which broadcast?" I asked, pulling out a coin from my pocket, a gold coin from Terraria. "The first one? Or was it the last one?"
"You can sleep in the teachers' quarters, there are some empty rooms," Ozpin offered.
"Don't you ever give up? That idea again?"
"I'm not one to give up easily," Ozpin replied. "As for why I asked if you had plans, Glynda has a class this afternoon, I was going to ask if you'd like to participate as a teaching assistant." By the look Glynda shot at the man's back, it seemed she hadn't been informed of this.
You know what, screw it.
"Will I get paid?" I asked.
"Of course, after all, you'll be working," he didn't hesitate to respond. "We also have health insurance, along with bonuses for overtime and paid vacations," he added.
"My stay here is only for a month," I commented. "They'll comment if the new teacher disappears into thin air. They'll probably blame Glynda and accuse her of killing me and disappearing with the body."
If Ozpin disappeared too, the look on her face wasn't very friendly towards either of us.
"The time you're not in Remnant will be officially considered an ultra-secret mission, in case they ask questions," he didn't hesitate a second to come up with an excuse... Either that or he had already thought about it yesterday.
"Do I need to sign a contract?" I asked.
"Only if you want to," Ozpin replied. "I should have one or two ready in my office, just need to edit them a bit."
"No, it's not necessary," I didn't want to waste my time reading a contract, let alone climbing that damn tower. "I trust you to pay me my money properly." I didn't think Ozpin would deceive me with something so trivial.
Ozpin nodded and extended his arm with an open hand, which I shook with my right hand.
"I forgot to say this yesterday, but welcome to Remnant, to the Vale, and to Beacon, Devas," he chuckled slightly amused. "Or, in this case, Professor Devas."
I put on the most formal voice I could muster to respond.
"Thank you for the welcome, Headmaster Ozpin." I must have held it for about three seconds before bursting into laughter, with Ozpin joining me shortly after.
"There are two of them now..." Glynda's horrified murmur only added to our amusement.
[...]
OMAKE NON-CANONICAL? (This thing here might actually become canonical in the future)
"Why do I decide to do this shit?" I looked around the forest without the slightest idea of where I really was.
"Accept this random mission, Devas, everything will be fine, Devas, it'll be fun, Devas..." I murmured. "Never listening to you again, you just come up with shit ideas." By 'you,' I was referring to the (CHAT) that convinced me to accept a random mission that had popped up.
I had no information about this damn mission, what world it was in, what I needed to do, or what kind of danger awaited me.
Shitty idea, just because I got stronger doesn't mean I'm invincible!
It took me some time to leave the city, when I did, I stumbled upon a sign written in fucking... English?
"Where the hell am I?" This didn't look like the United States, and there were signs in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Hawaiian?...
"Welcome to Honolulu." I read the sign aloud. "What the hell is Honolulu?!" That name is familiar to me for some reason... I looked at the camera waiting for an answer, Stark was the quickest.
[(MOD)GeniusBillionairePlayboy] Honolulu is the capital of Hawaii. It's been a while since I've been there, speaking of which, I need to schedule some vacations.
"Hawaii? Seriously?" It was serious.
It didn't take me long to reach the city and confirm that, well, I was really in Hawaii.
"What's this? Did I finally get a break?" I sort of hadn't rested in a few months, was this finally my vacation?... "Of course not." My life wasn't that easy.
What the hell was going to happen here? I didn't remember any stories taking place in Hawaii, so I'll wait for everything then.
I walked around the city for a while, and it was actually a pretty nice place, the variety of tourists indicated that I wasn't the only one with that opinion.
"At least I'll enjoy my time here." I had been wanting a vacation anyway, I'll enjoy it.
I wasted no time in going to the beach and well... Not doing a damn thing, I lay on my chair with just my shorts and relaxed in the sun.
"Shit's gonna happen, I know it, but until then, fuck it, I'll relax to the fullest." I said after chewing on my barbecue skewer. "I'm gonna buy a beach house..." I didn't specify in which world because it would be in all of them.
I managed to enjoy my day peacefully for about eight hours, until the sky started to darken and become cloudy with dark storm clouds.
It was like the world was warning me that some shit was about to go down, I did what any human being would do in this situation...
"Fuck it, not my problem." I said calmly.
... I continued lying on my beach chair.
Had the sun disappeared? Yes, but I didn't care one bit, for the cold to affect me I would need to be inside a glacier.
I lay there for another hour before starting to see the FUCKING US NAVY COMING WITH HELICOPTERS, FIGHTER JETS, AND TANKS TO THE FUCKING PLACE WHERE I WAS!
"Holy shit, what's gonna happen here?" Was this shit an entire army?... I had seen a newspaper that was two thousand and fourteen, a parallel world where the third world war was going to happen?.
"Sir, I need to ask you to leave along with the others." A soldier came up to me and spoke, more as an order than actually a request.
I looked around and saw that all the people who were still on the beach were being escorted out by the army, not just me.
"Sure, but one question buddy. What's going on?" I got up and started walking calmly. There's no reason for me to make it difficult for the guy, he's just doing his job.
"Sorry buddy, confidential information." The soldier said in a serious but friendlier tone. "I advise you to find a safe place, things are gonna get ugly." He advised me.
"Alright, thanks for the advice buddy." I thanked him and before going far I turned around. "I'm Devas, by the way, what's your name?" I asked.
He hesitated for a moment before responding.
"Ford Brody, pleasure to meet you, Devas." Then he turned around and walked away as if he was looking for someone.
"Nice guy." I commented to the (CHAT) before dressing using the VoidBag and starting to walk along with the rest of the people.
It took about ten minutes for everything to go to hell when I heard what could only be a scream of a dinosaur fused with a fucking laser cannon firing...
"What?...” What the hell is that? And why does it feel so familiar?...
... Then the ground started shaking, as if something huge was walking on it.
I didn't have time to think about what the hell was causing this before seeing a huge wave coming towards me like a tsunami.
"Of course it would come to me." I couldn't just dodge and leave, there were hundreds of people on this street, even though I didn't know any of them, I wasn't going to let them die when I could save them with a simple wave of my arm.
I blurred, my body disappearing a few times faster than sound before reappearing in front of the wave and slashing it with Houtengeki.
I didn't even use a technique, sheer brute force along with the wind sent the water flying away, I didn't stand still to see the result before disappearing and doing this with the closest streets.
I couldn't save everyone, but I would avoid as many deaths as possible if I could.
On the tenth wave that I exploded, I finally saw what the hell was causing these tremors.
"A FUCKING KAIJU?!" I screamed. It was a giant bug-like creature. "IS THIS A GODZILLA MOVIE?!"
▆▅▄▆▅▃▂▆▃▄▄█▆▄▆▅▃▂▆▃▄█▆▄▆▅
The scream that happened after the Kaiju appeared assured me that yes, the blue glow of the fucking radiation that the giant lizard was emanating too.
"I knew this place was familiar." Damn, wasn't Honolulu the scene of the Godzilla movie?
I jumped to the nearest building to get a better view and I can only say that...
"HOLY SHIT!"
... These two were fucking huge... Why was Godzilla looking at me?
"What's up? The big guy's over there." I pointed to the other Kaiju, or would it be MUTO in this case... Who was also looking at me? What the hell?...
The MUTO looked at me for a second, then looked away to Godzilla, before looking back at me again and repeating this for about ten seconds before simply turning around and starting to run away.
OH SHIT! WHERE'S THE GIANT MONSTER FIGHT I WANTED TO WATCH?! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS, A COWARDLY MUTO?!
"You're not gonna go after him?" I asked the only giant monster left.
Godzilla glanced at me for a moment before snorting and beginning to chase after the MUTO, leaving me always in his line of sight. I wasted no time in following the two.
My vacation may have been interrupted, but I was damn well going to watch a giant monster fight!
[...]---[...]
A quieter chapter, explaining some things from the last one along with an OMAKE that I had been thinking about for some time.
Regarding the chapter: Well, Devas explained what he did in the last chapter, had a conversation with Ozpin, they both told each other everything but there is a certain trust between them.
Devas became a teaching assistant but don't worry about him being "stuck" at Beacon, Devas will explore Remnant this month he has.
Finally, the OMAKE... It will probably be canonical in the future, I've been thinking about throwing Devas into the monsterverse for a while now, especially with this new movie coming out soon... Stay tuned...
Well, that's it, as always, if you have any questions, just comment, I'll respond with my best without giving spoilers.
That said, good night everyone and happy reading!
PS: Why did Godzilla and the MUTO look at Devas? Any theories?