An Omake, entitled
A Series of Unfortunate Events. I'm not entirely happy with it, but I did promise to publish something. I know Kakara's characterization is off, but honestly it's based on a joke vote that is very out of character for her, so that's sorta unavoidable.
A follow up to the threadmark
here, if a completely different path had been chosen. Initial paragraphs stolen from the linked post and slightly modified at the end.
Suffice to say, it's non-canon. I tried to keep it compliant with the setting's rules, but doubt Seeing can work quite in this way. The sorcery is almost all conjecture.
You know what? Probably completely non-compliant.
"Whose mind? You need to find them,
right now, get down on your knees, and
beg their forgiveness for the trespass. You will explain that it was unintentional, I shall grab one of my Sorcerer friends to swear the person you visited to secrecy about the whole chat before sending them out of earshot, and you will immediately convince your Lord Father to offer whatever recompense is necessary. The mind is
sacrosanct, Kakara. You
do not enter it, not without permission and as a last resort even then. When you're
there, the other person by default can't see you or detect you until you're already touching something. Anybody whose mind you enter is in far more danger than you'll ever be. So you're going to offer your apologies, and
I am going to start drilling you on this immediately. It's not your fault, but this
cannot happen again. Done intentionally, tampering with somebody's mind is a hideous and abhorrent breach of trust. So yes. I will teach you Mind Projection. Because apparently the standard regimen simply isn't going to
take in your case." He stands up from his chair, looking decidedly more frazzled than he was a minute ago, and begins pacing in an infrequently-used corner of the room. "Now: who was it?"
Oh. Crud.
You bite your lip and fiddle with your hands. "Um..."
His eyes narrow. "
Scion Kakara..."
You laugh nervously. "Well, you see..."
"
Answer me immediately."
Composure Check: Oh My, no.
You freeze.
Sensei is Vegetan, you think,
Sensei has only heard the 'official' story of the Sealing. A thin sheen of sweat appears on your forehead.
What if he hates it? What if he hates me? What if he tells?.
You barely notice that your breath is coming faster and faster.
In fact, you think, mind racing down this track,
he's probably going to tell Dandeer! She's going to find out what happened and Seal him again! She's going to kill Jaffur!
You barely even notice that your hands have clenched into fists, and don't notice at all when they come together.
"Kakara?" Sensei asks, pausing his pacing.
It's not a vision. You
know what visions feel like, and it can't be one. But in your mind's eye, all you can see is that endless white room, and the rage and hate and anger that's locked away. And that tiny smile. That smile that is going to
die.
"
kamehameha" you hear yourself murmur, aura spiking briefly to a paltry 20 million.
Sensei's eyes barely have time to widen as the blue beam strikes. Ki waves don't travel at anything like the speed of light. They're not even as fast as the speed of sound. But Sensei's power level right now is only 1,297,332. It might as well be instantaneous, given the distance.
And now his power level is gone.
You look out the new window in the side of the house, past the smoke slowly curling from your cupped hands.
Was that...you? Did you do that? Sensei is de...gone?
It is a sad fact of psychology that the mind can only take so much. The mind can bend in some truly amazing ways, but can be broken like anything else. For a time, your brain wars against itself. Sensei can't be gone! Why did he make you do that? Maybe if you close your eyes and wish
really hard, he'll come back? Even Vegetans don't have a bow designed for screw-ups this massive!
You don't know how long you're standing there, but it can't be long. The thick 'slap' of a stack of papers hitting the ground breaks you out of the spirals your mind has been running in. Something just fell out of the space in the walls, having been just barely missed by your blast.
You walk around the couch, eyes sliding away from the blackened scoop taken out of the top of one of the cushions.
There's a thick yellow envelope on the floor, with a name printed on it in large black letters. Your name.
As you open it, you notice that your fingers aren't tremblinb any longer. Inside is a stack of envelopes, numbered one through fifteen, and a pink envelope labelled "Read me first."
Kakara, the first letter begins, "
if you're reading this, I'm dead. I was blasted into atoms, and this envelope fell out of the wall of my house, where I'm going to hide it momentarily. There's about five more hidden in other places, but if you're reading this one then they don't matter. Please don't tear up my walls looking for them - houses in the middle of wastelands are expensive and I'd prefer this one to be as undamaged as possible when my brother inherits it.
I don't know who kills me, Kakara, and I don't know how far into your education we've gotten, so I'm not going to prattle on about how I knew where to put this or what shifted the future onto this track. Suffice to say, I knew that if I died by this wall, in a way that made a hole in the right place to drop this package, you'd be the first one on the scene.
Now, on to the envelopes. Envelopes one through six are letters to my friends and family. I'd appreciate if they were delivered unopened, but it isn't like I can stop you from reading them if you want. You'll find a list of who to give each one to in a later envelope.
Mutely, you set aside the first six envelopes, before you continue reading.
If my couch is intact, you need to fly away NOW. Tell your Father to gather the rest of the Nobles - the Enemy is here. This branch of the future is clouded over very heavily, so I don't know what's going to happen, but I know it's bad. For all of your sakes, I hope my couch is damaged.
You eye the half-circle of scorched fabric that your blast put into the couch, unsure if Sensei would be happy about it or not, given the circumstances. "
He'd probably be happier to be alive to see it," a traitorous voice in your mind whispers. You ignore it studiously, and continue reading.
If you're still reading this, good. It means the planet is likely to survive for a long time, yet. If you're wearing matching socks, go ahead and open envelope seven. If your feet are bare, open envelope 13.
This morning, when you were dressing, you couldn't find matching socks. Mato must have been messing around again - he's been acting passive-aggressive for a while, and that's recently changed from crushing your cereal and chips to powder to hiding your socks. Man, visions are
weird.
If you're still reading, look out of the hole. If you can see the sun, open envelope eight. If everything is on fire, why are you calmly reading this letter?
You glance out the hole. Nope, no sun visible. And nothing is burning.
MADE YOU LOOK! That might be my final lesson for you, Kakara, so take it to heart: Seers, of all people, need to know better than to take everything seriously. Find humor where you can, when you can. Some of the things you will See will be terrible, and far too many good Seers let it destroy them.
Now, since the couch is damaged, the sun isn't shining through my newest window, and your socks don't match, open envelope 9. He's signed his name at the bottom of the page.
You pick up envelope nine and open it, wincing as the paper cuts your finger. You hold the newest letter in your left hand, idly sucking on the papercut.
I'm sorry, Kakara. If you're reading this, I was killed by someone close to you. The vision wasn't completely clear, but I did see the young Vegetan Scion smiling cruelly. I fear the Seal you fought so hard to place has broken, and a monster shaped by rage and fuelled by vengeance has been unleashed upon Garenhuld. Set this letter down to your left and open envelope 13. Inside you'll find the solution.
You wonder where Sensei went wrong in his visions as you set the letter to your left. A sickening feeling has been building as you read the letter, spreading from your stomach to your throat as your traitorous mind processes the thought that you killed someone. As the paper hits the floor, your spine begins to tingle. Your dad will be here any moment, there's no way he could have missed the power you spiked to, or not felt the blast.
You resign yourself to facing his Judgement, and reach for envelope 13.
Did you know, the letter inside begins,
that Sorcery can do some amazing things? Of course, you were there for the Sealing, and you've seen wards virtually every day of your life. But did you know that some wards are incredibly subtle? Some are so subtle that they are barely even noticed. One of these is a power-sapping ward. Don't worry - it doesn't actually drain a person's ki. But they can be set up to capture the power of ki blasts. There's some of these in the warding scheme of the Training Hall. I don't pretend to understand it all myself, but I have a Sorceror friend who described it to me like a battery. These wards pull in power from blasts and can store it, or use it to power other effects. For instance, in the trainig hall, these wards help power the other wards that hide our power levels from detection.
One of those wards was in the wall. It was destroyed, of course, but it did its job. It powered another set of wards. But they will stay largely inactive, unless they're triggered.
The chill in your spine spreads and gets colder as you keep reading.
It's hard to get wards set up for a proper time-delay. My friend was curing up a storm as he set up all the wards, and the only way to get the most important one working was to set it up to be triggered by blood. Tell me, Kakara, how's your finger?
Your eyes fall to the paper you placed to your left, noticing the tiny red spot on the corner, from where it sliced your finger. The delay costs you, as you feel the wards that had been building up finally snap to full strength.
Your power level plummets. The suppression wards are working overtime, disrupting your ki control. Suddenly you find yourself sitting at a power level of 7, with ki control worse than you can ever remember having. A ghostly image forms directly in front of you. Sensei stands there, created by either some sort of hologram technology or magic, and says simply, "I don't know why you killed me, Kakara. But I can return the favor."
Then the explosives concealed beneath the floorboards trigger, and you know no more.
As always, feedback is welcomed.
