How on earth will I do this? I'll reveal that I rolled Civilization and I have no clue how I'd be able to write something interesting happening. Well that's not true. There can be interesting things but... whatever story I tell here won't really be "Civilisation" it will just be "A day or two in the life of a random city."
...Here's a question: Do you all want to see Civilisation? Or shall I reroll? (To make it fair, I'd create a new list and roll on that, so none of the current options are likely to reapper)
As he flew away from the Kirby world, Joshua was trying to figure out how he could change back. He didn't really understand what had made him change in the first place so that was actually quite tricky.
With things as they were, wherever he went next, he was likely to be seen as some kind of monster.
So, where next? He'd figured out that using the broom had tired him out less so he hoped the warp start could be like that, but better. His goal was somewhere nearby, so it was just a matter of checking each spot as fast as he could, right?
Just as he was thinking about that though, something collided with the warp star. The object, whatever it was, was going the opposite way and the collision sent the warp star tumbling to the side and back the way it had come.
Red lights flashed around the warp star as a warning siren could be heard.
Joshua had thought the warp stars were more magical than this. For some reason the lights and the siren made it seem… lesser somehow. Like a ride at a theme park instead of the real thing.
The star shrank away, reverting to some sort of storage mode to keep itself safe and in that moment Joshua flew off and was caught in the slipstream of whatever had hit the warp star. The stream was multicoloured, sparkles of rainbow and gold.
It was like a rushing river that grabbed Joshua and forced him to follow the flow. Was this how those storms he'd encountered before worked? The ones that would drag him away from the worlds he knew off to unknown areas of space?
Well this one at least didn't seem to be causing that kind of issue. Looking ahead to where the stream was going, it looked to be taking him right back to Kirby's world. On one hand? Good, he'd get to see Kirby. On the other hand the contractors were already there and getting to work. He wouldn't have a lot of time to rest.
Whatever the thing was at the front of the stream crashed through the outer skin of the planet but it seemed to heal up right around it. It was like a clean form of what the sparkblade did. Could Joshua learn to copy that?
For now he followed the river in. As he crossed the place where the hole had been broken in, the world took shape around him.
He found himself at a canyon made of red rocks and not too far away from him was whatever had been the source of the collision in the void.
It was letting off smoke and Joshua hobbled over on his little dreamlander feet to look at what was inside of the crater.
It was a sphere made of some sort of grey metal, the top of it was segmented though as if it could open.
As Joshua approached, it hissed, those sections on the top sliding back in to reveal a strange sort of device on top. It looked familiar to Joshua.
It took him a moment to recognise it and in that moment it acted. A yellow beam of light shot out of it, scanning Joshua. Once its scan was complete, the device moved. A flexible underside that made it look like some kind of octopus leaped towards him. Joshua turned to the right, hoping that it missed his face as he lifted his stubby arms.
The Octopus thing hit his arm and bonded, shifting around until it was obvious what it was- a watch.
Joshua's sparkblade burst to light, golden light flowing from it to the watch while a few other streams instead seemed to go towards Joshua's case.
Finally the device's screen lit up and there was no denying what it was anymore.
What Joshua now wore on his wrist was an Omnitrix. From Ben 10.
…Why? And why had it been flying towards dreamland?
Gingerly touching it, the screen lit up brighter and projected holographic images above the dial.
Joshua began cycling through the offers as he went through what he knew of Ben 10 lore.
The Omnitrix was meant to be the ultimate tool of cross-species diplomacy as it literally had the ability to allow one to walk in the shoes of another species. Various villains however want it for the potential to make use of it as the ultimate weapon.
As a child, he'd watched a number of the seasons, but not all of them. He could say for sure that with one exception, he had no idea what any of the aliens he had access to right now were.
The one exception though was quite enjoyable. He switched to it, watching as the holographic figure of a humanoid stood over the dial. With two fingers he pressed the button down and he transformed.
In a green flash his body changed, his stubby arms extended, the bones stretching. Then the effect changed to his torso and legs. Finally a head grew out of the transformed Torso and the transformation was complete.
"A-Guy!"
Joshua paused. Where on earth had that come from? Regardless, he was a human agin. Though his old clothes hadn't reappeared. He was now wearing a green bodysuit, with the Omnitrix's dial still on his wrist, but now fused with his skin in a way that was very disconcerting.
Plus he didn't look right. His body was different. He stroked his (now much longer) beard thoughtfully. His muscles also looked quite a bit firmer now, though he didn't feel much stronger than he'd been before all of this.
Well then…
He'd gotten an Omnitrix. That was debatably worth the revisit on its own, but what was he going to do now? Just leave again. If he left here, it would be easier to trace him, not harder. The contractors could just skip going to the unknown planet entirely.
So… Joshua needed to repair the warp star. He didn't really know if it regenerated on its own but he now had time to kill until something happened.
The sun was setting and Joshua could make out what looked like a giant shadow-casting cloud off in the distance. Only it wasn't a cloud. It was a castle. A castle flying through the air, held aloft by one over-inflated pink puffball.
He must have finished dealing with King Dedede. Joshua cringed, feeling momentarily sorry that he couldn't help Kirby with that.
At least he could warn Kirby now. He'd heard from the contractors how their stamp worked, he just needed to warn Kirby. Best case scenario; he'd be able to defeated them before they thought to buy any powerful slaves.
Joshua watched as food fell from the bottom of Castle Dedede into the ocean below Kirby and smiled. At least the fish were getting well fed.
The problem was that Joshua wouldn't have long. The contractors had probably noticed him leaving and coming back. Who knew what they'd be thinking but they'd be even more determined to catch him now.
Before he needed to run though, he might as well see what had changed inside the case. It had been just as he'd obtained the omnitrix so it would probably be related in some way.
Placing his case down, he quickly dipped inside, opening the door into the area itself, you quickly saw the "new thing."
A tall tower with the Omnitrix symbol about halfway up had appeared on top of the more hilly/mountainous region of the inside of the case.
Well that's… something? To be honest he had no real idea what it was meant to be. What he could guess though was that Cogita likely wouldn't enjoy the new tower overlooking the wild hills she'd decided to set up camp in.
As he was thinking, the Omnitrix timed out, returning him to his dreamlander form. He scowled at the red faceplate. Oh so he'd have to deal with random timeouts too? Just great.
Well, he's rested long enough, he might as well get going… or…
He had an Omnitrix now. Kirby was almost certainly sentient enough to be scanned. Joshua could just… become a being on par with some elder gods.
Okay, lets test this first. If he could scan anything, he'd be able to scan his Pokemon.
He went out around the case and while his Pokemon were suspicious of the small creature at first, they calmed down and allowed him to try and scan them. Annoyingly only Alakazam scanned properly though, but it did give him an 11th alien form at least.
Why didn't the others scan though. He seemed to remember something about the show saying there was a minimum amount of intelligence required but he couldn't believe that all his other Pokemon were under that threshold. Ninetales or Dragonair for example!
But no, the others just didn't scan properly for whatever reason. Pity.
Either way, time to go try it on Kirby!
Before he left though, he cast a glance back at that new tower. Really, what could it be? Maybe some sort of management computer?
The Omnitrix in the show needed a link to a planet (Not that Joshua could remember the planet's name) to store all of the DNA. Was that job being done by that one tower?
Well… he only knew it was carrying eleven (maybe 12 if dreamlander counted) forms. With that small number, maybe a planet just wasn't required.
Anyway! He turned and left, running back up the stairs while looking through his current playlist. He wasn't sure any of these could fly… well there was this one that looked like it lacked legs but that might just mean its movement was slug-like.
He could try them out later, when it would be safer. For now he just brought his broom out with him. He'd fly to kirby, greet him and get a scan and then he'd probably have to just hide somewhere for however long it took the warp star to regenerate.
Flying on the broom, he took off towards the balloon form of Kirby.
As the night sky blew past him, he worried. The contractors might already be on his trail again, and if they weren't then they would probably be on Kirby's.
Reaching Kirby, Joshua flew in front of his face and called out to him.
"Sorry I wasn't able to help."
It wasn't a problem to Kirby, his eyes looked happy to see Joshua but he couldn't afford to be distracted right now. He needed to make sure this food got to the people who needed it.
As he and Joshua flew through the sky, Joshua began to ask "Hey Kirby-"
But before he could finish the question, the contractors made their entrance.
The moon came out from behind the clouds, but it looked wrong. Instead of looking a normal colour it was… green.
Then on a nearby peninsula's clifftop, a shining white light appeared. What either of these could be was hard to determine at first until the moon shattered open to reveal an eye.
Was that?
Joshua only had time to think that before a massive weight began to crush down upon him, the will of a deity.
Kirby was forced to let go off his breath and the castle lost the only thing keeping it up so you and Kirby found yourself falling into the sea right along with castle DeDeDe.
Luckily as you were in a shallower area, the castle only half-submerged and you and Kirby were relatively safe standing on the castle's walls.
Still, the crushing weight forced itself on Joshua and he understood that he didn't have a chance in this fight. This was something he didn't have a hope of fighting.
Kirby looked up at it, even as he was squished into a little Kirby Pancake.
"What… is that?"
Joshua recognised it now, though it had taken a while.
"Nyx." From Persona 3. Some sort of goddess of death or something like that.
Meanwhile the shining light dived into the water and began quickly approaching the castle. As it did, Joshua was able to make out that it wasn't swimming. The blond haired figure in a massive poofy dress was running along the water.
"And that?"
"No idea." Joshua admitted. It would probably come to him but he didn't recognise her. Well she looked something like Saber from Fate/Stay night but there were some slight differences.
Joshua shivered "I… I'm not sure I can help you Kirby. You could come escape with me but…" he trailed off and Kirby nodded.
"I'm not running. If someone endangers my home, it goes through me."
Joshua looked to the side and repeated "I'm sorry… I'm sorry that I can't help."
Kirby just nodded "This is something more than just a maniacal monarch. I don't really blame you. Even so-"
Kirby would face down anything that threated his world.
Joshua took a breath. "Can I scan you, I want to create a record."
Kirby allowed it and Joshua held up the Omnitrix long enough to get a scan of Kirby's biology. There, now there was another bit of DNA to use.
He showed off to Kirby, transforming into a copy of the pink puffball. Well, Joshua was a green Kirby, instead of pink but it was the same in a way.
Joshua couldn't help though. Not only could the Omnitrix time out at an inconvenient moment, the Contractors could also summon more help. For some reason, Joshua doubted that these were the only things they had summoned.
Joshua turned then and fled. He dove into the underwater part of the castle and swam until he found an air pocket. There he decided to cut free from the world.
As he did, the Omnitrix timed out again, returning him to dreamlander form once more. For goodness sake.
He feared he might not be able to stay human ever again. Maybe that was just a pointless worry though. Hopefully the sanctuary would have someone who knew how to turn him back to normal!
The other contractor slave was Archetype Earth from the Nasuverse. Just for clarity.
Well, that's a thing. The very world after Joshua fears he might never be human again, he gains the power to become a human on a temporary basis.
So…Joshua's Omnitrix kind of sucks. The first ten alien forms he unlocked were collected under the tag "Drawback playlist." AKA: in theory these are ten of the worst aliens you could have. And one of them is human, because of course it is.
Anyway, the next eight worlds! We're almost at the end!
Generic Star Wars Fan fiction
Generic alchemist
Izetta the last witch
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Generic Spy
Undertale
Shin Megami Tensei 4
Fate/Revelations Online
None of those really excite me.
Hmm? I just realised that both this and the last set had undertale in it. How did that happen? Ah, one was a jump for the Undertale fanmade multiverse while the other was normal Undertale, but in either case it just defaults to Undertale normal.
…Undertale would probably be the most fun out of these. I certainly don't want F/RO as that deserves an entire world dedicated to it. Star wars fanfiction might be funny too. Plus, the Omnitrix in Star Wars would be… interesting. I should note for these: Demons don't count as life forms for the Omnitrix. Undertale monsters… might? Not sure. Children appear similar to their parents and that appears to be enough for the Omnitrix sometimes.
Demons probably wouldn't be scanable. Probably. The Omnitrix needs a target to have something "DNA-like" to copy. It doesn't need to be actual DNA, but there needs to be some sort of information that would be directly passed to the next generation
Okay so the question is "What is a SMT demon, but really?"
They're a shadow of humanity in some ways, they don't come from the collective unconscious (Unlike shadows/personas) but they are affected by it.
I don't think an SMT demon actually has the information within itself that could produce another member of its kind.
Of course, this then gets to the question of what demon fusion is from the perspective of the omnitrix? A question I hope I won't have to answer.
Regardless, I'd rule that in this story, Demons aren't scanable by the Omnitrix.
Hmm. Then Undertale monsters might not be scannable either. Would something like a vampire? Or werewolf? Star Wars seems to be the go to if you want to use your new toy.
Hmm. Then Undertale monsters might not be scannable either. Would something like a vampire? Or werewolf? Star Wars seems to be the go to if you want to use your new toy.
Vampires and werewolfs should normally count. At least in settings were werewolves breed true they'd definately work... Hmm. Vampires in most settings would technically be mutants or something like that which count as a seperate DNA strings sometimes.
Undertale monsters do procreate though, children look like their parents. I think they should work. The fact that monsters might be(?) cross compatible might mean they all count as a single species though.
But yes, star wars is definately the best for no question DNA collection.
...The Omnitrix can't scan midichlorians in a host, they'd count as a parasite and not part of the scanned species. AKA: Joshua can't cheat his way to force powers.
No...
I mean, I can write an interesting chapter with this, but I wanted to save that world for a full jump in the future. I'll stick with it though. Unlike the last time I can actually write it after all so a mulligan wouldn't be as justified.
Plus it gives Joshua a chance to try out some powers in a relatively safe situation. At least until- wait let me check something.
(One rule check later)
Ha! They contractors would make a wrong guess that buys Joshua a ton of time.
Joshua wanted to scream as he popped out of the rip high in the night sky above a city full of light.
Strictly speaking though he wasn't in the sky. He grabbed hold of the area just to his side and found himself hanging from a giant tower using his little dreamlander arms.
Where on earth was he? Was this earth or was it just a world that looked like earth?
Calm down a touch and work through it. What massive towers did he know that were made in the same way as the tower he was holding onto? The… french one. The Eiffel tower?
Okay, so the tower looked like the eiffel tower from what he could see as he looked around. There was an area that looked off below him though. He couldn't just climb down to it- well, maybe he could but he didn't want to. That would be far too dangerous.
He didn't normally suffer from a fear of heights but just randomly appearing high in the sky was terrifying all the same.
Right, where was he? Getting distracted. There was a dish-like thing below him, maybe some kind of observation room?
Did the Eiffel tower have that kind of spaceship viewing area? Joshua didn't think so, but he'd never been up the eiffel tower to check.
Were there any others like it? Japan had a tower didn't it? With an observation deck? He felt like he'd seen it before in anime and games. It was called something like the Sky Tower?
Well, there Joshua was, hanging roughly six hundred and thirty meters in the air.
Joshua began to put things in order, taking deep breaths as he worked himself out of that emotional tension.
This was clearly a somewhat modern world of some sort and that hurt.
In all his time travelling so far, he'd never really interacted with "His world" at "His time."
Well, it wasn't England at least and the time might be slightly different. He really couldn't tell from here in the sky. All he saw was a field of lights around him. Now that he was calming down and had a good grip on the tower, it looked quite beautiful.
So, what would be his plan? He still didn't actually know any Japanese, he'd need to perform the ritual around people to do that.
Luckily the language learning ritual didn't have any obvious tells. To the regular citizens it would just look like he was meditating somewhere crowded. He might get weird looks but he doubted someone would stop him.
That would require getting somewhere crowded, or more specifically getting to ground level. Hopefully without anyone seeing his dreamlander form either. It was too small to be something like a mascot costume.
Most dreamlanders would be around a meter tall, so many if someone had hired someone really short…
No, people would be able to tell it wasn't a costume.
Okay, so what were the options that Joshua had. He could use the Omnitrix to become an Alakazam to teleport down. He hadn't really practised teleportation though and he couldn't be sure that wherever he was teleporting would be unobserved.
Plus, if he needed to stop somewhere first, he'd have to teleport either into a very likely occupied elevator or into the observation deck.
Neither was a good plan so he needed something else.
Slowly he began climbing down as he continued to think.
Maybe he could transform into Kirby's race specifically? If he sucked in a breath he could fly fairly freely.
Of course he'd never tried that before but… well… he didn't have a better idea.
Fiddling with the dial for a moment, he brought up the Kirby form and pressed down.
His body morphed and inflated before stabilising. He was now a green… whatever Kirby's race was called. Though he also had a green cape and his normal travelling hat on which was strange.
Well the hat was understandable, the cape less so.
Quietly stepping off onto the roof of the observation area, Joshua looked over the city that was like a reflection of the night sky.
…He didn't know how far a Kirby could fly. He remembered that in some of the games, they gave him a breath limit for how long he could remain airborne and that worried Joshua.
He tries it a few times, sucking in breaths and waving his arms to take to the air. It worked and he found he could hold his breath for a few minutes like that.
That was probably not enough to fly straight from here over to somewhere safe to land out of sight so he'd need to go the more difficult route; directly down the tower-
Tree! That was it, the Tokyo sky tree.
…Anyway.
The problem with the idea to just fly down the tree is that flying is slow when done like this. It was entirely possible that someone might look out of the window as he was passing and see this strange balloon monster.
…Maybe they'd just misidentify him as a balloon. It wasn't worth taking that risk however.
What he'd need is a distraction of some sort.
As he sat and thought, the Omnitrix turned him back and began recharging. That hadn't been that long at all really. Only a few minutes, though that was more than old series Ben had sometimes gotten.
Well, while it recharged, Joshua would plan.
The first idea that came to mind for a distraction would be fireworks. If he got his ninja tool kit out he could make some Ninja grenades but that would scare the people too much. They'd be looking around desperately for the source of the danger.
No… something sneakier… fireworks?
However, he didn't really know any good spells to make fireworks. It probably wouldn't be too hard for him to learn but he didn't have the time to study illusion magic theory right now, especially with how limited his information was on the subject.
An idea struck him suddenly. Something he'd gotten a few worlds back and put in his cottage for safekeeping.
He attached his case securely to the top of the building and went inside for a short time, returning with a large blanket-like piece of cloth.
Throwing the invisibility cloak he'd obtained from that evil magic school's world around himself, he nodded. This would do fine.
The Omnitrix had come off cooldown so he transformed and while wearing the invisibility cloak around himself, flew down the tower to ground level.
Tokyo was still busy enough at whatever time it was now. Joshua kept the cloak around him as he found a spot with enough chatting and foot traffic for him to sit down and meditate for a while.
As he sat and reached out with magic and his natural senses, time passed. About half an hour at first and then everything started making sense.
Co-workers were laughing as one was helping keep the other upright, a pair of teens, a boy and a girl were chatting as they had a late night date and a mother was doing some late night shopping.
It was that young couple that attracted Joshua's attention the most.
"People say that the official figures are up to two hundred dead now." The girl was saying "How awful."
"But still thousands more are trapped." The boy said "Aren't you glad I decided to spend that day with you."
The girl laughed "Of course I am, I know you're safe at least. My brother though…"
"They'll find a way to save them." the boy comforted her "He'll be fine, they'll intercept the signal somehow and get them all safely out of the game."
…A game? A digital death game?
Was that the kind of world he'd wandered into this time? It didn't feel quite right though, he felt that his ninja magic was running strong here. Maybe it was just because it was Japan though.
His Omnitrix had timed out again while he was doing the ritual but it didn't matter due to his cloak. He walked through the city looking for more clues before eventually having his attention caught by a TV showing the news.
"-are still trapped within the game 'sword art online', the game's developer 'Akihiko Kayaba' is still missing and the police are still on the lookout for him as quite possibly the greatest cyber terrorist in history."
Okay, so he was in Sword art online. Or outside it, rather. It's interesting in a way that he didn't get trapped in the game.
He wondered what the contractors would do when they showed up since they haven't made themselves obvious yet. Would they appear in the game and get trapped there until the game was cleared. That bought him two years or so.
It might have been a complete accident but that would almost certainly be enough time to find the Renegade sanctuary.
Of course, that assumed that these guesses were right and that they wouldn't appear out here to take over the world while all the main characters were playing a game, helpless in their hospital rooms.
…And now Joshua had made himself sad again. This world had no real future, even if its death may be delayed a few years.
Maybe… if he got strong enough fast enough… he might be able to come here in time to save it? How long did Aincrad take in canon? Two years or so? Joshua might be entirely misremembering that though.
Right so if the contractors were stupid enough to try and search SAO for him first, then he had two years or so.
"Where the hell is he?" the first man asked, looking at the phone that any observer would say was not meant to be there.
His partner shrugged, swiping the screen to look around "I mean, the contractors that were covering the stupid pink puffball's world said he found some way to baffle their trackers."
"But they're meant to be impossible to fool." His partner complained "You know? Fiat-backed? The way in which we just win any given encounter?"
"The fiat we're given isn't unbeatable." his partner reminded him "If the renegade found something uniquely powerful, it might be enough."
His angry partner yelled into the night, an orange diamond already above his head, even though the two of them had been here for less than an hour.
The Cardinal system had identified them as outsiders but they had bought the right protections before even arriving. It wouldn't be able to pass the information that they were suspicious on to the people who could get around the protections they had.
"We'll just have to check." The calmer man muttered "One by one, and if he somehow duped us…"
The angrier man realised something and his face fell "Hey Bel?"
"Yeah Moole?"
Contractors get to go by whatever they want to go by and the company will accept those names.
"What if he's not even in the game?" Moole asked.
Bel paused and thought about it before hissing under his breath.
"Then we'll just have to clear it quickly. This world's special so we can get some quite powerful allies if we want."
Bel pulled out his phone and he and Moole searched the slave shop.
Back in Tokyo, Joshua was getting tired, his eyes were drooping. Wrapping the invisibility cloak tighter around himself, he laid down somewhere he wouldn't be interrupted. He needed to stay out of his case for now to scout for Contractors but he also wanted to sleep.
He only got an hour or so of rest though before he thought he should move on. Before that though…
He checked its sparkblade.
"Can you get me anything cheaply?"
Light shone from the blade onto his arm and he felt it burn. It was a similar feeling to when he'd gotten his body upgraded in ancient Japan before.
Hmm? Ow. He could feel new magic nerves forming in his body. It was surprisingly painful. Even so, it did give him some more magical energy.
Why was SAO giving him magical power for free? Who knows, but he got something else too, a strange warped feeling in his chest that reminded him of how magic looked when he was learning it like a blue mage.
It didn't seem to be a boost to learning abilities though, at least not from what he could tell right now.
The feeling settled down and Joshua stood up. He really didn't know what sort of a world this was but…
Hold on.
Looking down at the sparkblade, he did see it still had a slight glow to it. Enough for some small things probably.
"Could you give me the power to understand a world?"
Yes, it could. The glowing light flew to Joshua's brain in a rush.
He'd wondered what the rules underpinning magic across the infinite worlds was, well, he didn't quite know that now but he had the next best thing. A perfect understanding of how magic worked in [This world].
Woah, that was strange.
But he learned the truth. While this world had looked like Sword art online, the magical underpinnings were those of the Nasuverse.
Some kind of fused world maybe? Joshua would need to ask Cogita for specifics.
Though as a side note he now understood too why his Ninja magic varied depending on which world he was in. That ancient Japan had been part of the Nasuverse too, or at least it also used the same magic system.
Each world had its own sort of [Magecraft Foundations] that either helped or hindered his specific kind of Ninja magecraft.
If a world didn't believe in his kind of [Ninjas] then the Ninja magic was harder to use.
Then…
Looking at his blade he asked again "Is there a way to be an exception to the rule, to have my magecraft work right anywhere."
It glowed and formed a quickly fading halo of light around Joshua. He looked around himself in awe for a moment before it faded but then everything clicked.
His existence and magic was now accepted by [The World].
His magecraft wouldn't be limited anymore, as long as there was mana to use, his magecraft would function regardless of belief.
Well, with that all said and done, he thought it was about time he should leave this world. The contractors were either trapped or so late that he'd easily miss them and he had a sanctuary to find.
He found a random back alley and made a rip. It was time to find the finish line at last.
And here's the penultimate chapter of the chase. I wanted to save Fate/Revelation Online for when I could do a full jump inside its version of SAO but I made do with what I had which was the outside world that has been so fleetingly seen in FRO that it was basically free game.
Anyway, here is the last set of worlds:
Haruhi Suzumiya
Ogre Battle - March of the black queen
SCP Universe
Exalted Mountainfolk
Generic Superhero
Final Fantasy 4
DC comics
Overlord (Series)
That's quite the selection for a last set.
The only worlds I want to avoid here are the ones I intend to visit later to do full worlds for (Haruhi, Overlord)
I suppose SCP would overcomplicate things too.
Also, the sparkblade is currently running a little low, so I'd want to avoid any of the worlds which have a ton of stuff I'd want to grab in passing (Overlord, DC comics)
Side note: Those bracketed words are actually another perk he picked up. He can just do that in conversation now if he wants to explain something complicated really quickly. That should help him explain the company to people.
By the contractor's system? Tier 10. I wouldn't really like it that much either, even if Joshua wouldn't interact with any of the really dangerous stuff.
Right, lets randomly pick a world now. Why not in a few days? Because I want to be writing one of my quests today but none of them have enough votes, seriously, none of them, across two websides. So anyway, I want to write something so I'll write the next chapter of this.
Anyway:
Slash, step through, seal behind. Joshua was quite used to the process of entering a world.
He'd taken the time to look around out there in the void and he was fairly sure he was in the right sort of place. If he picked the right direction, he could get to the sanctuary in his next jump.
Finding the right direction though would be difficult. There were more directions in that space after all. It wasn't just yaw and pitch that could affect one's heading but there were at least three, probably more, other axes one could rotate along that would affect which world you ended up at.
Joshua sighed and took a look at the world he had decided to stop at to prepare for his last and most difficult jump yet in this sequence of worlds. At least the contractors wouldn't be able to have a go at him here if they had been delayed as he'd guessed
He stood on a road of stones and trodden earth, it looked decently maintained at least. On one side of the road, he could look out over a field towards a large body of water, a very large lake or a sea? It was hard to tell. To the other side was a set of rolling hills that as they rose higher transitioned from grassy plateaus to rocky highlands.
Joshua sighed, a puff of cartoony air puffing out of his lack of a proper mouth in his dreamlander form.
His stomach rumbled. Oh yeah, he hadn't eaten since that sandwich with Kirby. He'd grab something from his cottage later though he was worried that food was running out. Not quite gone yet but…
He sighed and began walking with the sea to his right. By the position of the sun, he was fairly sure this was west. He really just had to keep going until he bumped into a town or something. He wanted to know where he was at least.
Now, why wasn't he flying? If this world had any taboos about magic, he didn't want to set someone off by mistake
As he walked, he heard the trundling of cart wheels as a trading caravan. A small fleet of wagons was coming the other way down the road.
Quickly transforming into human form with the Omnitrix, he headed towards them with a wave.
"Greetings!" He called out to the leading wagon.
"Greetings yourself." The driver noted back with a frown as Joshua began walking alongside the wagon "What's a traveller doing alone in these times. You might as well be asking for some monster to gobble you up."
They spoke the unified tongue at least. That made things easier.
"Monsters?" Joshua acted confused, he needed to know if this world actually had monsters or not. "I've heard of a few, but I thought there wouldn't be enough to be worth worrying about on the main road."
"Aye, the dragons and fairies won't bother you on this road." The driver agreed "But what about the Pumpkins?"
"Pumpkins?" Now Joshua was actually confused. "I haven't heard of those monsters before."
"Your information must be a few years out of date then." The driver nodded "You a foreigner? Your voice does sound a ta' off."
"Something like that." Joshua agreed "But about those pumpkins…?"
"Aye, so a while back an evil witch named Deneb moved into a castle past the mountains to the south. She's the hot but crazy type, you know?"
"I… guess?" Joshua accepted that and the driver continued.
"So this witch begins her dark experiment and unleashes pumpkins across the region. They're a type of bipedal monster but they're meant to be able to use magic. They also have a Pumpkin for a head, hence their name."
"Uh huh." Joshua… well, he was unsure but something that strange wasn't likely to be fiction at least not obviously fiction. Maybe Deneb just had a group of loyal mages that for some silly reason wore pumpkins on their heads.
Truth was stranger than fiction, especially when travelling through these many worlds. He wouldn't be that sceptical of something like this.
"I should hurry on then." Joshua noted, jumping down from the wagon "How far is it to the next stop down the road you came from?"
"On foot?" The driver noted "Two days I'd reckon."
Two days by foot… 40 miles or so? His broom could cover that easily. Of course he didn't want to cause a fuss by arriving on the broom so he should just go some of the way in the air and the rest on the ground.
"Thank you." Joshua called "I wish you luck on your journey."
"And I you, good travels stranger."
Joshua walked the opposite way to the trader's caravan until it was out of sight, then he pulled out his broom.
He arrived in the town known as "Roseanheals" a day later. He had taken the time to stop in his case on the way though so he could eat but Cogita hadn't been there. He left a note for her so she should be available to speak at a later time.
Roseanheals… no, nothing came to mind. It was a fairly generic fantasy sounding town name.
He didn't have the money to buy food nor the ability to remain in human form the whole time. The latter could be fixed with careful use of the invisibility cloak but for the former…
Well… he'd deal with that later.
He still had to create an overall plan. During his time travelling here, he'd decided he wanted to see what that witch was doing in the south.
He wanted to see if she was a main character or not really. The entire concept of the ridiculous creatures reminded him a bit of other Nippon Ichi games. He could imagine them having a game where you played as a witch trying to take over a world with silly monsters.
He didn't remember them having any games like that but there were other possibilities too.
Actually… he might as well ask when he sees Cogita, he was already going to fill her in on the state of the world and ask if she recognised it, maybe he'd ask about the witch too.
He spent a little time asking about how the monsters typically moved, did they follow a road from Deneb's castle?
"Thankfully no." A merchant answered when Joshua had asked him "There's no direct road between this area and that shadowy castle. The hills and mountains are the only way across."
Well, that just meant that Joshua would have to fly.
Outside the city, Joshua went scavenging. He had a good guess for which plants were edible and which weren't. He couldn't really say where the instinct was coming from but he felt like he'd had it for two years now at least, since early in his journey.
He also managed to catch a rabbit with a thrown shuriken. Not a poisoned one obviously, a normal one. He prepared rabbit and wild mushroom (the good ones) stew.
He had prepared it in his kitchen so he wasn't surprised when Cogita showed up. She had double checked the mushrooms and they were fine.
Over lunch, Joshua filled her in on this world. He didn't have that many names yet so-
"A witch named Deneb who makes Pumpkinheads?"
Cogita had stopped him suddenly when he got to that part.
"Yes? But I was told they were just called Pumpkins."
"This is Zetegenia then, the land of Ogre Battle. The time period is less clear, Deneb appears to be immortal and can reincarnate so we could plausibly at any point in the timeline."
"So is she the main character?" Joshu asked.
Cogita shook her head "I guess in game terms… A recurring character, but never the main character. She's boss or merchant depending on the time period but she typically joins the hero's quest.."
"So is she good or evil?" Joshua asked.
"She's amoral." Cogita answered,"Though she does get better at acting like a good person as time goes on."
After lunch, Joshua went back outside the case. If Deneb would eventually become something like a good person, would he still be needed here?
Well he wasn't ever "needed" here, the main character would come along eventually to deal with her.
Hmm. Well he could ask her if she had any sort of ability to put up wards to allow him to cut a rip into the world to act as a viewing hole without worrying about something eldritch coming through.
It was worth a shot, and if she didn't care or want to help, well, too bad. He could just leave.
As he plotted though and was walking through the hills, he heard a groaning sound. Spinning he saw humanoids with rotted-black pumpkins on their heads. As he looked closer, their bodies were rotting too.
Pumpkins? Or Pumpkinheads rather if that was what Cogita knew them as.
The group began charging at Joshua, some of them pulled their heads off and drop-kicked them at Joshua. Joshua dodged as the pumpkins suddenly grew in size before vanishing and reappearing on their necks at normal size.
The ones which had hung back were glowing with an inner fire before they belched out a stream of fire like a dragon.
Joshua clapped and he used alchemy to quickly form a wall to hold off their flaming breaths. He had to dodge away again as giant pumpkins began flying through the wall that he had made.
These were powerful!
If they were just going around attacking humans at random then there was a clear and pressing issue.
He couldn't let these reach the town.
"Reflect!"
Casting his modified spell again as the Pumpkins breathed fire, he charged through the flames. The flames burst back against their users as Joshua drew his blade.
"Blade Rush!"
Mana flowed through him and into the blade to extend its length. With a wide swipe, he cut across two of the Pumpkinheads' torsos. That seemed to work as a killing blow but there were still three left who had resorted to head-kicks as he couldn't reflect those.
As he dodged and looked for an opening, one of the heads hit him when it was enlarged. It vanished quickly but the damage he felt wasn't from the head's weight but rather it was damaging his health itself.
He wasn't sure, but the best metaphor would be something like the Gravity spell from Final fantasy, it had cut his energy in half.
He wouldn't let them do that again though. He pulled out his wand with a spare hand and pointed, yelling spells to blow the remaining Pumpkins apart.
Once he was safe, Joshua sighed. That had been really tricky.
And for his health… He hadn't had the time to adapt Curaga into a different style yet so he'd have to live with it for a while.
He quickly mounted his broom though. He'd had a horrible thought.
From the sky he could see it clearly, small groups of those rotten pumpkin-headed undead were leaving the castle in the south and preparing to march. If not stopped they'd overrun this land.
He had been thinking of not getting involved but he didn't have a choice now. This somehow felt unnatural to him, He couldn't put his finger on exactly why but…
Regardless, he had to stem the tide.
Leaning over his broom, he accelerated towards the castle.
Shooting across the sky still took some time though, even at one hundred and fifty miles an hour.
The first twenty minutes or so was fairly calm but then the marching hordes spotted him.
Joshua pulled up on the broom as massive pumpkin heads began flying up to him. He dodged hither and thither. The pumpkin's fire breath couldn't reach the heights Joshua soared at but their heads didn't seem to observe normal laws of physics with how they flew.
How and why had they all come to be? Was Deneb more evil than Cogita had implied?
Regardless of all that, the castle was approaching. Only a few more minutes before he could dive.
The moment he was in the castle though, they'd all be upon him. Those shockingly powerful pumpkinheads. He needed a plan for how he'd deal with them.
The ninja talents would do, Joshua suspected. Now his magecraft would work well regardless of the world. That didn't give him infinite mana, indeed it didn't actually give him any form of mana at all. He could power the spells (Which were at their most efficient) with his life force alone.
On that subject… ah. He hadn't taken the time to check before. That new power of his that allows him to understand the magical underpinnings of the world.
Let's see… it was a system of words and gestures, typically requiring a staff or other implement. There was a flow of mana through the world but there didn't appear to be much of a focus on it. There was also holy and abyssal magic which were stronger than arcane…
So, a fairly standard fantasy magic system. Joshua didn't know any spells from it though so he didn't really have anything to try and replicate with his wand.
Oh well.
Hmm? Ah, he'd reached the castle. Suching in a breath, Joshua turned his broom and dived down. With his wand out he pointed at a spot on the castle roof that he was racing towards.
"Expulso!"
Blue light shot forward and the roof of that area of the castle exploded inwards.
In the rush, he flew through the collapsing roof and jumped off his broom. He left it in place as he quickly blitzed the two pumpkinheads that had been in the room he'd crashed into.
It might have looked ridiculous to any normal person. This little creature with a stick and a knife blasting apart these creepy pumpkin monsters.
His best guess for where Deneb would be making all of these was the throne room, if that failed there might be a basement lab.
Throne first though.
The castle was infested by those powerful undead. Joshua trusted his Ninja magic though.He became a ghost- of the metaphorical type, not literally. He glided through the castle past an outpouring of pumpkinheads.
It seemed like they were all coming from the direction of the throne room, so he probably had guessed right.
The magic flowing through his body ached but it was a soft ache, his magic circuits were warm but they were withstanding this spell relatively painlessly.
Finally he made it to the throne room. The doors were hanging wide open as a long line of the undead marched out. If they were coming out at this kind of a rate, Deneb must be summoning them incredibly quickly.
Joshua had to end this now.
He snuck through the open door into the throne room beyond only to find it… empty.
Well, not true, it was a throne room after all. Or whatever it was called in a non-royal fortress. A meeting hall of some sort? It had a big chair at one end, that was good enough.
He was the only living person in the room though, the pumpkinheads were pouring out of what looked to be some kind of summoning spell. That… wasn't how he thought they were made.
Joshua didn't know how to break the spell properly (Disrupting the circle might fail to do it) and the monsters were emerging faster than they could be killed so…
He had to find Deneb. If she was still alive, she might know how to fix this. Joshua didn't know if he'd have to beat it out of her but at this point he was invested enough to try.
Joshua retreated back through the castle. He didn't know where to check so he might as well have to check everywhere.
So, up the towers first or down into the dungeons?
…Let's start with the dungeons.
He had guessed right. In the dungeons he found a cell guarded by two of the Pumpkinheads and the sound of yelling from inside.
Things like "You're meant to obey me, you empty-headed gourds!"
Did she use gourd in that sentence because it sounded like guard or was Joshua imagining it?
Her voice was very charming though. Describing exactly why was a bit hard but if Joshua were to try it would be that it was simply "nice to listen to."
He quickly dispatched with the gourd guards and he heard her call out again.
"Hmm? Is there someone there who came to rescue me? My hero ~♡!"
Joshua gave a sigh "I need your help to stop everything going on, are you okay with that?"
She let out a melodramatic sigh "Of course, it all left my control a bit."
Using his sparkblade to quickly break the lock, he stepped inside and saw an incredibly beautiful woman.
Let's be clear, he'd seen enough attractive women during his journey (Granted, one is the woman who gave him his sparkblade who was transcendently beautiful) that his sense of that sort of thing was a bit thrown off.
Regardless, she was lying on the dungeon floor as if it was a plush couch, displaying quite a bit of cleavage.
…He was still in dreamlander form, but she didn't really seem all that put-off. He did take human form though.
"Well ~♡? Come free me my hero."
Joshua sighed and asked her to explain what brought things to this point as he first cut her chains and then got to work on the manacles themselves.
"Well, two or three nights ago I found a new ritual while going through the library and it was meant to be able to summon a special type of Pumpkinhead called a Halloween-"
"That's really their name?" Joshua looked over from cutting her free to ask.
Deneb nodded "Indeed, they're named after the season that most wandering spirits can be found. Regardless, I instantly went to try the ritual out but while it did summon Halloweeens as planned, it prevented me from taking control of them."
"So you're trying to say none of this is your fault?"
"Of course ~♡!"
She touched his hand lightly and Joshua's blade slipped. He cursed and kept working.
"Could you not distract me when a wrong move may cost you a hand or me fingers?"
"Oh fine~"
With a bit more work he had the witch free and he gave her a serious look "Now we get rid of your rogue spell."
Deneb nodded, while she seemed to be trying to look serious or responsible, it looked a little silly with what she was wearing.
The two rushed through the castle together, defeating Halloweens on their way until they got to the throne room. There Joshua protected her from the Halloweens until she completed the ritual to break the summoning.
That hadn't actually gotten rid of the Halloweens though so Deneb then cast a wide-range spell to pull the rogue Halloweens under her control.
Then she paused.
"Deneb?"
"Now hear me out sweety ~♡. If I left them out there a little longer, they could gather some materials for me."
"Materials like what?"
"Mostly Pumpkins. The people of this region grow them all over the place."
…
"You said 'Mostly' Pumpkins. What else would you be collecting?"
She was silent for a moment before strolling over to Joshua. He stepped back before she could put an arm around him but she sighed.
"Bodies. I'll have them do some grave robbing to get some bodies."
From the sound of it, that wasn't what she was originally going to have them do, but as she was trying to sell the idea to Joshua she'd decided to go for the nicer option (than murdering people to have extra bodies).
Even so, Joshua shook his head "Nope, bring them all back now. You won't cause a disaster."
Deneb looked to be considering if she could force her way through, either by seducing Joshua into agreeing or ordering the Halloweens already in this room to kill him… but no. She'd seen him fight.
"Okay ~♡, I'll bring them all back."
Joshua did have something to discuss with her though, other than the Halloweens.
"Do you know any magic that can be used to create a seal around a rip in the world."
Her eyes narrowed at that.
"Well, that depends ~♡."
Joshua gave her the brief explanation of his sparkblade, how he could travel between distant worlds with it, how it was bound to him (so she wouldn't get any funny ideas) and how he wanted to find a way to observe worlds beyond before jumping without doing too much damage to the world.
Deneb actually did have something, which Joshua hadn't expected.
"I'm no ordinary witch ~♡." She winked at him "I'm THE Witch~♡."
She was still curious about the eldritch monsters he'd mentioned could come through but Joshua pointed out that they could damage her experiments.
It took a few days to work out the ritual in full but they'd found a tower in the castle and they set up a ritual space there. Joshua's ability to copy magic memorised the ritual. All it would take is a little converting and he could do it with some other type of magic.
Joshua opened a rip in the surface of the world and Deneb's ritual covered it in a layer of magic that made it safe to continue existing. At least here. This required set up though and was highly localised.
Staring through the dimensional window, Joshua took a few days more to look at the various worlds. It was a little maddening for a normal person though. Deneb claimed to get headaches from looking out into infinity.
When Joshua had seen enough and he decided it was time to go, Deneb offered to come with him.
Joshua… needed to think about that. She had actually become close with him quite quickly. She was still overly lascivious but she was also a genius and Joshua had come to actually find her charming.
She'd also seen him in human form quite a bit throughout the days and showed little to no… what would you call it? Discrimination? No, not quite. She seemed to not care about what you looked like, she only cared about what was inside.
…That was probably why she also liked her Pumpkinheads so much. She'd mentioned during one meal they'd had together that she could still see the sorts of people the bodies had belonged to in life and found them charming too.
That said, she was still (From Cogita's description) an amoral psychopath. Just one that was easy to like and get along with.
"I might come back to get your help." Joshua suggested "But… not for now. I'm sorry."
The strange thing was he really was sorry. He had filled her in on the contractors and everything. There was some fear in his heart that a male contractor would come and well… she was a Beautiful woman.
It hurt, but he wouldn't invite her and her army of pumpkin-headed undead to worlds where those would be disturbing things.
"I'll see you again then." Deneb nodded, no wink, no lust or anything like that in her voice.
Joshua nodded and cut through the spell, stepping out into the void.
He knew where the sanctuary was now thanks to her. He sealed the world behind him and kicked off into the endless.
And that is the proper end of the first arc of the story. Next… few chapters maybe? I'm not sure how long his visit to the Renegade Sanctuary will take. More than 1, less than 10, hopefully less than 5.
The important note though that this is the single best place for exposition in the entire story so far. If any of you want me to answer a lore question for my jumpchain meta-lore, ask it and I'll include it in these next few chapters.
Joshua floated in the prismatic space between the world, his eyes looking "down" through the axes that no normal mind could comprehend to a cloud of darkness that stood out against the garish colours of the rest of the space.
It was something like a super-nebula, a cloud of roiling darkness.
What better place to hind a sanctuary? Well, assuming that it was the right place (And he was pretty sure it was) it did raise some questions, such as why no one else could find it.
One possible reason might be the "Angle" of it. As he'd previously noted it was some degree of "down" relative to the rest of existence. His mind twisted, spheres stretching out into shapes of higher dimensions as he looked down.
Each set of directions on an axis, the "To and away" from an observer's zero point, were coloured differently in this space. The constant shifts of colours were atop this, things moving against an infinite backdrop.
Down at the "Bottom" of this axis was darkness. The Nebula likely would have blended in if he wasn't looking at it from a kind of side-on angle already. It didn't explain it perfectly but it did at least make it sound plausible.
This would probably be a long journey so Joshua pulled out and deployed the warp star. It had been in a miniaturised form in his pocket just in case. Climbing aboard he started jetting off towards the Nebula.
As he flew towards it, it didn't seem to get larger. Joshua was confused at first but he figured it out after what felt like ten or fifteen minutes of constant flight.
He'd underestimate the structure's scale. It was massive.
The previous description of calling it a Nebula was partially right, but in some other ways it was a river. A thick hyperdimension river. In some ways it was like the particle streams he'd seen before, though in the wrong colour.
He didn't really understand the colour theory of this space that much, to some level he knew it was just his mind bending to witness colours that simply didn't exist in the limited human spectrum.
There were three colours of importance though;
Gold, Rainbow and Black. Gold was the colour of a world's core and the colour that his sparkblade shone when giving him new items or blessings. Rainbow… was unclear. He'd only really seen it in omnidimensional streams.
Now that he was thinking about it, it would also be the most common colour; the rainbow hues of this space between worlds was shining with its light. He didn't understand what it was but he did know where it could be found.
Lastly was this new black. A river of black particles flowing from "Somewhere below the absolute bottom" up to here. He didn't know what was down there at the river's source but he didn't like it. He'd seen black a few times in relation too his sparkblade, though he struggled to remember the exact times.
Generally it made something bad happen to him? That's really all he got.
The river varied in widths but it was always at least two or three good-sized worlds wide. As it flowed up from the depths it also seemed to flow back down into them in time.
He reached the edge of the river and looked into it. From this close, when small substreams broke off like solar jets of plasma leaping up and falling back in, he saw that it wasn't truly black at all.
It was [Null]. Absolute nothingness. Like the void of space.
He didn't know how he breathed, how he saw or how he maintained his temperature in the space between worlds. It wasn't like there wax proper oxygen here after all.
All that he knew was that if he entered the river, he'd lose whatever it was that had been keeping him safe.
…He'd have to just hope the Warp star could protect him.
But was he even sure this was the right place anymore? A storm of this darkness would swallow up anything that entered. How could a sanctuary survive?
Was he just wrong? Had Arceus been wrong?
All his instincts still told him this was the right place.
He feels a tug, like a line of string- or maybe two lines of string? One was attached to his sparkblade, the other to his heart. Both led into that darkness.
Joshua took a breath and commanded the Warp star into the storm. It started slowly, as if the warp star itself was second guessing. Even so, it dived.
Joshua hung on to the middle of the ship as the warp star ploughed a course through the Null around him. Behind him like a single shaft of sunlight was [Reality], the last vestiges of what he'd known before.
The Warp star was shaking, suffering as if undergoing reentry. Where it was struck by the null, it eroded, gold dust flying back up the last ray of light like bubbles escaping a pitch-black sea.
The erosion wasn't anything like normal rust though. Where the null touched, it annihilated. The warp star was slowly, piece by piece, Ceasing to exist.
Joshua grit his teeth. If he wanted, he could fly back up the tunnel before it closed. He could leave and keep running from the contractors. But would that be better than an ending here?
Joshua shook his head though, adjusting the warp star's path to flow with the stream instead of deeper in. This should hopefully reduce the damage it was taking on.
He lost sight of the tunnel leading up as the river closed around it. There. He was now beyond the point of return.
Either he was right, or he was dead.
He couldn't see anymore. All things were plunged into nothingness.
There was nothing to see in the first place, maybe only his hands or the warp star. The noise of the latter was swallowed up quickly by the void. That absolute muffling was one of the scariest things.
Joshua knew that if the warp star went too slowly, the stream would catch up behind them and batter into his back. He didn't know what the Null would do to him but he didn't want to find out.
He didn't really know how he was breathing at this point. There was nothing around him to breathe, not even whatever he could have breathed before.
Where was he?
Was he beyond the "End" of the axis he'd seen. Was the river an endless cycle and he was heading to its source.
He suddenly felt a shiver as if he was being looked at by millions of tiny eyes. He clung all the tighter to the warp star, inadvertently putting his hands around the edges were he was no longer protected from passing Null.
The Null hit him and in a burst of light he saw again. As pain burned through his hand and he pulled it back to his chest, rainbow-hued particles burst off and allowed him to see for just an instant before they were swallowed up by the blackness again.
His loss of grip weakened his control over the warp star for just a moment and it came into contact. It burst into a firework of gold that also let him see for a moment.
…Even if he was right, would he be able to survive this? Or would he be blown into nothingness and absorbed by the Null only a short distance from his goal?
Joshua had fought against men and gods, yet now he felt like he was in the most danger he ever had been in.
This river would rip him apart piece by piece, grinding him to dust. When they were done there wouldn't be a single atom of this person called "Joshua" in any universe.
Corrosion at the conceptual level.
If his guess was right that would be the same fate met by any who entered the river.
A normal human, a hero, a god, a conceptual being, all would be eroded away. Before this stream of destruction, there is no protection, no matter how strong you were.
The only way he could endure is to keep going with the flow and hoping that he had been right when he'd thought this was the location of the sanctuary.
Just as he was wondering if Arceus had been lying to him in order to convince him to end his own life, Joshua saw something.
There was light, a single pinprick of light in the distance. A single star in a night's sky at the end of the universe. The last star in all of existence. Joshua grit his teeth and changed the warp star's direction again. Instead of going with the flow, it angled off towards that star.
Light was hope, light was a way out.
The null broke against his body and the warp star, blowing chunks off both. The warp star lost one of its five points as its underside blackened. Joshua lost fingers and had a section of flesh on his side ripped free.
Even so, his case was still pressed between his body and the warp star. No matter what happened, he would keep his companions safe!
What must Cogita be thinking? Was she collecting some food? Doing her washing? On a walk? Or was it night in the case and she had gone to bed?
He wouldn't let her, or any of his Pokemon, die when they had put their trust into him.
That single star was their salvation too, no matter what happened he would get them to safety!
As he thought that, the star grew brighter and larger before an explosion of new light appeared as he burst out of the river of darkness.
His eyes screamed as they had been adapted to the darkness and were now forced into bright light. He was in a soft beam of golden light that was blinding to him.
When his eyes adjusted he saw that he was in some sort of eye of the storm. The null flowed all around in all possible dimensions but this space was protected.
In the center of the space was a "World" unlike any Joshua had seen before. Instead of a glass ball with gold at the center, this was a fully constructed world. It was like he was flying above a city the size of the moon.
It was fantasy, it was sci-fi, it was horror. It was all things. A haven for renegades from across all of existence.
He'd made it.
Atop the city's highest point was a lighthouse shining out three beams of light that each prorated along different axes. Within its lantern room was a great light containing three glowing orbs made of golden and rainbow light. They looked like the orbs at the hearts of planets but… somehow weaker.
The city also morphed as he drifted in the light, as if it was different from each and every possible angle. Something familiar would be there, no matter who you were.
Weakly, he directed his warp star to follow the beam's path. His eyes were drifting closed and he suspected that if he went to sleep now, he may drift back into the storm and be erased from existence.
He focused on the single goal he had: Landing.
The beam of light continued to guide him in as the city revolved beneath him. Lights lit up the city, the lack of a sun must mean it was in a perpetual nightlife.
His eyes tried to close again and he felt the warp star dipping. Not that he could see it but the warp star's underside had been almost entirely eroded away. Joshua might as well be flying on a piece of driftwood.
The Warp star dipped further and Joshua knew he was about to crash. In his mind that was trying to shut down, he searched for pieces of info that could help.
"Slow your landing speed."
Yeah, that was right. He pulled up on the warp star.
"Come on." He muttered as the warp star crashed, still too fast.
He begged his ship to slow and finally, finally-
Impact. Slower than it might have been but it was still too fast. The warp star bounced and flung him free to spin and roll across the hard ground.
Through cracks of his eyes he could see the people around him, they were in a thousand different art styles.
One of them had a phone.
"Get an ambulance here." Joshua heard in unified tongue. The voice didn't sound worried. No it seemed like this wasn't anything out of the usual at all "We have a new visitor who made the crossing."
Oh, Joshua realised he'd be getting medical attention. That probably meant he could drift off…
Who knows how long later, he woke up to beeping and… singing?
The beeping seemed to be from some sort of medical readout while the singing was… also coming from the same machine?
Cracking his eye open he saw the machine's screen was covered in loads of different information.
The song must be some kind of diagnostic, even if he didn't understand what it was reading.
He was whole again. His fingers repaired, his side no longer full of holes.
Glancing over to the other side was a bedside table, sitting on top of that was Joshua's travelling case and the warp star, which also had been repaired.
Hah… he was safe then. He made it to his destination.
Weakly, he stood up from the bed. It was incredibly comfortable but he wanted to look out giant window he'd seen from his bed.
The window had been covered in a set of blinds which Joshua pulled aside.
He was hit again by the wonder of the city. It wasn't morphing and mutating anymore… but perhaps that was always just a trick of the eye. This city was eldrich in construction it seemed.
…Well, this all gave him a chance to learn about what was really going on. Perhaps he should see if he could take a tour somehow?
A full chapter for just getting to the sanctuary. I hope it wasn't boring or repetitive, I tried my best to add interesting new points but… eh. We'll see. I've decided that this arc will have 5 milestones in it, just to keep the action moving along a bit quicker.
Again, if there's anything you want to know about how the setting works, feel free to ask so I can make it one of the questions Joshua asks in the coming chapters.
As Joshua approached the door of his hospital room, it shimmered. A message appeared on the back of the door as if written in blood. Or rather, printed in blood, as there was something sterile and automated about how the letters appeared.
The message was short but informative.
"Greetings new Renegade, you were badly hurt upon landing in the sanctuary so you were taken to Sanctuary Care, the primary hospital set up by the Sanctuary's Board of Directors. The cost of your treatment is 300 milliCP. As your transport was also damaged, it was repaired for the same cost. Both costs should be paid in the Lobby."
The message vanished after a moment to be replaced with another.
"You should register with the Board of Directors to get an access pass so that you needed travel through the Negative Choice Storm on your way out."
As the message vanished, the door stopped shimmering and Joshua heard it unlock.
He pocketed the Warp Star's storage form, and grabbed his case while wondering about the message.
A Board of Directors? That sounded like something the Company would have to be honest. And then there was that cost for his healthcare. The fact that he had to pay the cost at all made him suspect the founders had been American (Or some alternate dimension version of them) as only they'd charge to save a life.
Regardless, he did have to pay and he didn't really know what a milliCP was. It was what the currency seemed to be but he didn't exactly know how it converted to anything else.
This was a city of people who had likely collected powers from various worlds, gold likely had no value to them, so what essential resource would they value? A fiat currency maybe? He hoped not, that would mean he was already in debt.
At the lobby, he asked and they explained that "One milliCP is one thousandth of a CP."
At Joshua's kind-of blank look, the clerk sighed "Are you really that ignorant? I'm not a teacher, just know that you should have plenty of CP if you've jumped between worlds. Where do you get new perks or items from?"
Joshua proffered his sparkblade and the clerk nodded "That'll do, sign here."
They turned a small note towards Joshua.
"I, the signer, swear to pay a charge of 600 milliCP to Sanctuary Care for two items, My healthcare and the repair of my transport.
By the board of directors, this note is guaranteed not to have any contractual traps."
There was a few spaces for signatures under that. The clerk had already signed for the hospital (Though their signature was somehow unreadable.)
Joshua sighed and signed, leaving the only unsigned section as one for someone from the board of directors. The Clerk held the note in the air and announced.
"Paperwork for the board."
There was a flash and when they lowered their hand, Joshua saw that the last space had been filled up with another scrawled signature, written in gold.
As the paperwork touched the counter, Joshua's sparkblade glowed and a tiny amount of light flowed from it into the building.
"Pleasure doing business." The clerk remarked without much sincerity.
Joshua just quickly turned and left.
The streets of the Sanctuary were noisy. There was a large park area directly in front of the hospital that must have had over three hundred people milling about and talking.
It was all a bit busy for Joshua's taste, so he headed down the hospital steps and quickly headed for the edges of the park. Not that doing that helped much as the streets beyond were filled too.
Joshua began to wonder about the scale of the sanctuary. He'd always thought there was a small number of Jumpers or Renegades. But maybe he'd just been looking on the wrong scale.
As far as he knew, there were practically an infinite number of worlds, Even if the rate of new Jumpers or Renegades being created was 1/world/millennium, that still meant there'd be a practically infinite amount of world travellers running around within a finite amount of time.
Now he was fairly sure that wasn't how it actually worked as Benefactors seemed to be involved in some way. If a finite number of benefactors each raised a new world traveller every hundred years, that was producing a finite, though large, number of world travellers in a given time.
Maybe the question was instead "Why are there so many renegades?"
Finding a quiet place, Joshua opened his briefcase and allowed Cogita out.
"We're here then?" She asked, looking around at the city, at the sky full of darkness and the noisy streets lit up by hundreds of different kinds of light sources, must glowing in a colour somewhere between white and gold.
Cogita took note of the architecture. It looked normal to Joshua, or at least as normal as some European towns had it. Buildings were built where their inhabitants could build, without an overarching structure as was more common in cities.
His travelling companion had a different opinion though as she bent down and traced her finger between a building's outer wall and the sidepath they were standing on.
"Exactly ninety degrees." She commented "In theory at least, look here."
She stretched her hand and there was some strange warping. For a moment her hand looked wider.
"The buildings are all leaning, but they aren't rotated using euclidean logic, but into alternate angles."
When Joshua had been trying to land, he'd seen the city twist and morph, he'd likely been sliding through all those alternate dimensions.
"It reminds me of the time my original dealt with Hounds of Tindalos." Cogita suggested "This is true eldritch construction. The sort where the traditional definition of 'Non-euclidian' breaks down."
"What do you mean?" Joshua asked.
Cogita nodded, standing up "By normal definition, Non-euclidian construction would just mean 'Construction on a sphere' which you might note-"
"Is all construction, as the Earth is a sphere?"
"Indeed." She nodded "Excepting of course the worlds which aren't a sphere for whatever reason. What I call 'True Non-Euclidian' is anything accessible in standard three-plus-one dimensions yet that exists within four or more spatial dimensions. Normal rules distort slightly when this occurs on the macro scale. A straight line as the Murkrow flies might not be the shortest route."
"So what does that mean for this Sanctuary?" Joshua had to ask.
Cogita shrugged "Well… that's not clear. I expect it is just part of how they maximise living space. I'm not sure how we'd access the other layers, but the deeper layers might not be as safe. For now…"
She shook her head "For now, we should just keep looking around."
Leaving the small side path, they kept walking through the sanctuary. The "Genre" of their surroundings seemed to change every block. One minute it was victorian gothic, the next it was… what was the proper term?
"Togas and Crystal spires." Cogita noted "It's an Ultra-tech art-style, most civilisations don't develop it until near the end of their development. It typically comes post-scarcity, when a civilisation can afford to spend a lot of resources on just making their society look good."
Another block looked like it had originally been built in a brutalist style but it was absolutely covered in graffiti as far as the eye could see. It was very distracting. This was probably the intentional style though.
Next was… well. How would someone describe it? Raygun Fascist? That kind of wolfenstein art style where the nazis had rayguns and getpacks.
Joshua and Cogita quickly rushed out of that block, really not wanting to meet the locals. The block after that one though turned out to be very interesting.
The style was Arabian nights and it seemed like it was some sort of street market. Lots of people had set up stalls which were also in a rainbow of styles. They sold a lot of different fantastical wares for what sounded like absurd prices.
"Box of disintegrator rayguns, 199,999 milliCP!"
"Healing potions, crates of six for 49,999 each!"
"Copies of the true Excalibur! Get them here for 799,999!"
Cogita scowled "1 milliCP is one thousandth of a CP? Then these are total rip-offs."
It put Joshua's hospital bill into comparison certainly. If a healing potion was marked up at something like three and a half times as expensive as the life-saving care he got.
"How much is a CP normally worth then?" He glanced at Cogita as he asked.
Cogita tilted her head "CP- or a Choice Point as it's more commonly known, is a unit of energy which can be sourced in a number of ways. For most normal Jumpers, they get 1000 CP when first arriving at a world due to a short trade deal made with the world they're visiting on their behalf by their benefactor."
"Okay… so my sparkblade gets it too in some way?"
Cogita nodded slightly "In your case though… well it's theft instead of a deal. When you cut into a world and while the sparkblade is within the world, it's slowly stealing CP from the world you're in. Sometimes it will even do more damage in some ways to increase the rate of theft."
…
"Oh." Joshua finally understood. The reason that he was dangerous to worlds wasn't just his initial cut and the cut made while leaving. As long as he carried the sparkblade, he endangered the worlds he stayed in.
"There's some limits though." Cogita noted quickly "Your sparkblade should have an absolute limit to the amount it absorbs per world. Your blade should never decide to just rip a world apart for the points. It hasn't so far at least."
That probably was meant to be more comforting than it was.
As they walked on they found something like a pet pound full of various fantastic creatures who were being sold, including Pokemon of course but also some more… interesting options.
Like a group of young Digimon, who were entirely sapient.
"Where's the line between animal and human?" Joshua wondered aloud as they looked in through the pound window.
They'd seen many people around with animalistic features, though few actual animals that weren't pets or mounts.
"If sapience isn't the line, what is?"
Cogita looked concerned at the question too, but she didn't have an easy answer. As they walked away from the point, Joshua continued.
"What about Omegamon from before, if Renegades enslave sapient beings just like the Company, what's the difference between them?"
Cogita looked away "My original self… she only knew Renegades as villains."
She told the story simply.
Before the Company had even come into existence, there had been renegades. Those who broke from the rules. Jumpers who found ways to murder their benefactors and craft their remains into the first sparkblades.
Renegades were the first peer-level threats to Jumpers. Benefactors did tip the balance by aiding their Jumpers though.
"Generally, a Jumper evil enough to think of mass enslavement was also a Jumper who would be willing to kill their benefactor for the freedom to do as much as they wanted." Cogita remarked.
There were other threats of course, benefactor tier threats like a number of what were called "ROBs" or Random Omnipotent Beings. Some were good and willing to follow rules in regard to the multiverse while others would become patrons to Renegades to help them spread their ideas of how the world should be.
The company was thought to have been founded by these groups, ROBs and Renegades.
The idea that he was anything like any part of the company made Joshua feel uncomfortable.
That said, it seemed ROBs and Renegades could follow their own rules. If they refused to follow any kind of rule, then this sanctuary would have been impossible to create.
As they walked on, they ended up bumping into someone at the corner between two blocks, one that looked like a cartoony version of heaven (Full of bubbly clouds) and the other looking like a wild place on a mountainside, with the buildings being caves dug into the mountain's walls.
The person they bumped into was a young woman with folded black wings on her back. She wore white clothes though and had a knife sheathed at her belt. Joshua recognised it instinctively as another sparkblade.
"I'm sorry." Joshua was able to apologise a moment before the woman did "I couldn't see you coming."
"No, it's my fault." The woman apologised too "I should have been paying more attention."
She glanced down and saw Joshua's sparkblade too and nodded "Ah, how did you get your blade?"
There was something serious behind her eyes. Joshua felt the question was quite important.
Joshua explained his history, how his earth had been invaded and how the dying benefactor had gifted him the sparkblade.
Upon hearing that, the woman relaxed "Ah, okay then, I was worried you were one of the murderers for a moment." She shook her head "Ah, where are my manners, my name is Sera, Ess-E-Ar-Ey."
"I'm Joshua." Joshua noted simply "The normal spelling? I guess?"
Sera shrugged "I've only seen one English spelling for Joshua so… yeah. Assuming you're English?"
"I am." Joshua confirmed "And this is Cogita."
"It's good to meet you." Cogita nodded slightly.
Sera looked curious "A companion?"
"No, just a travelling partner." Cogita remarked "I haven't gained any perks."
Sera made an "Ahh." sound and looked back to Joshua.
He looked back to her sparkblade and asked "Besides that, you thought I was one of the ones that had killed their benefactor?"
"Well they are the second most common, and the most common to use sparkblades." She said quietly.
Joshua raised his hand slightly "I don't really know about the other types."
She nodded "That makes sense, you're fairly new right?"
"Right."
"Well…" Sera looks to the side "There are… four or five different types of renegades, depending on who you ask. I'll go from most to least common."
The most common were "Proto-sparked Jumpers" which was what happened when a Jumper with some form of Multiverse travel perk gained access to something powerful enough to allow them to use it to travel between worlds without their benefactor's oversight. This was really common as it happened. They hadn't killed their benefactor but they were still dangerous.
Second most common were those who had murdered their benefactors and forged of them a blade. They were called True Rebels, at least by most renegades. Sera preferred thinking of them just as Murderers.
The next two were two of a kind, both were Ex-Jumpers who lost their benefactor in some way. The third most common type of Renegade was the Orphaned. Jumpers who had just bored their Benefactors enough to get abandoned by them. Sometimes they were just given a sparkblade. Who gave it to them wasn't known. But the theories went that it was one of the Murderers who just wanted to give away a spare sparkblade after they'd killed another benefactor.
Next was Sera's group, the Lost Angels. They were full Jumpers who'd been separated from their benefactors. They wanted to find their benefactors again so they could reclaim their old chain
The last most common was Planeswalkers. Yes, the type from Magic the Gathering. There were some rare people across the omniverse who were born with the ability to channel natural mana in such a way that they could planeswalk without any assistance. They were treated as Renegades though as they had no Benefactor.
Joshua didn't cleanly fit into any group but Sera suggested he was something like a lost angel like herself, or rather an Orphan as there was no hope in Joshua able to reunite with his benefactor.
They'd all moved to a park area to keep discussing. Cogita was actually really interested in all of this as it was new information to her; nothing that her original self had known.
After the full story, Joshua leaned back on the park bench and sighed "I really wish I knew more, there's all this information you know because you were once a Jumper and I have none of it."
"You have some of it." Cogita corrected "My original-"
"But that's not my information." Joshua pointed out "And you can't be with me full time to answer questions."
"True enough." Cogita nodded "But I will still try to help."
But there was so much Joshua didn't know;
Why did worlds look like glass balls surrounding a golden core before he entered them?
What were the meanings behind gold and rainbow hues?
How were worlds created and how did they die?
And then there were the questions he had about how to save his world.
How did time travel work?
How could he save his world and get it back the way it was?
What could he do to become strong enough to take on the company's occupation force? The same force that had killed a benefactor. Maybe multiple benefactors.
Joshua was ignorant about what he had to do in order to do what he wanted to do.
…that was phrased weirdly.
"I might have a suggestion about that." Sera noted "There's an academy on another level of the city for new renegades. Well, it is mostly for Planeswalkers who somehow make it through the Negative Choice Storm. But it provides lessons on the nature of reality to any who need to know. Even I needed to learn some stuff there when I first arrived."
Joshua nodded "That sounds perfect, how do we go there?"
Sera took a little time teaching Joshua and Cogita how to navigate levels on the way down.
"There are some Renegades who understand the true non-euclidean geometry in such a way that they can just walk across the divide between dimensions." She remarked "But for the rest of us there is the Spatiovator."
It looked like an elevator that was parked at the edge of a road like an old English phone booth.
Sera led them in and Joshua saw it was designed like a normal elevator. The wall on the other side of the door was a mirror, then to the left was a massive control panel and the right had a computer screen from where you could search for your destination.
Sera quickly hit one of the buttons and the doors closed. Joshua didn't feel the elevator move but when the doors reopened they were somewhere new. It was a park area in front of what looked like a massive university building.
"Welcome to the Sanctuary Academy." Sera noted "Let's go see what classes are on right now."
Wow, I didn't think I'd be able to make this chapter over 3k words.I didn't even really expect to get to 2k. Regardless, we're coming up on the lessons. Remember that if you want any question about the metalore answered, comment it so I can put it in the next chapter.
It really doesn't have many students (Seeing as world travellers can learn these lessons in many other ways), it's even out of the way as anyone who wants to become a student needs to at least be experienced enough to find the sanctuary and work their way through the storm.
I'd say there are probably other schools for this sort of thing. Benefactors likely have entire classrooms full of young jumpers. I think I even saw someone start a Jumpchain story about that once.
That might be a fun interlude or Omake for this story too, but it isn't one I'll write soon, not with an arc ongoing.
The Sanctuary Academy was just born out of the fact that some people can make it here and know nothing, and teaching them the basics helps create repeat visitors to the sanctuary.
As they climbed the steps, Joshua realised something. He was human, he had been in human form since waking up in the hospital. He just hadn't really noticed because this is how he thought he should look.
He still had the Omnitrix but it wasn't even properly "active" right now. Somehow they'd fixed it so he wasn't stuck in dreamlander form anymore. He thanked the hospital silently for that.
As they walked, he glanced at Cogita and admitted "I only just realised I was in human form again, properly I mean."
Cogita was a little confused "Really? I had thought you'd figured out how to change your alt form at last."
"What do you mean by Alt Form?" Joshua asked as they stepped through the academy's large doors.
It was Sera that answered though "An Alt form is the term for a different form that a Jumper could take through supernatural means. A werewolf Jumper would have their human form and their wolf form as Alt forms. Were you really stuck?"
You nodded and Sera looked thoughtful "I remember when I got stuck at first. Most Jumpers have help from their benefactor to make switching alt forms quick and easy. But for renegades they need to figure it out on their own."
"So the hospital has equipment to force Renegades into their native form?" You guessed and Sera shrugged.
"I'd assume so, it would make sense in your case. They probably want to treat someone without the added distraction of different forms."
Sera goes up to the receptionist to ask for the three of you to join the introductory class. The receptionist nods and directs you all to the right lecture hall.
The hall is massive, twenty rows of seats going back and up away from the stage and said stage was massive. This place seemed closer to some sort of gladiatorial arena than a place where lessons would be taught.
Also, the room was huge- it must take up most of the building! Why even have separate doors if they'd all have to lead into here?
As they found seats, Joshua asked Sera who gave a simple answer.
"It's bigger on the inside. I'm fairly sure this academy uses a lot of… let's say "borrowed" Time Lord Tech."
"Doctor who?" you checked for clarification.
"That's the one."
As they sat and chatted the seats slowly started to fill with other students. A lot of other students.
"I thought you said that there weren't many people who'd need this kind of education?" You looked at Sera.
Sera shook her head "To be specific, I said there weren't many types of renegades who'd need it. I don't think everyone here is a renegade, some might be some young and untrained proxy of a ROB. Either way, that's not all there is to it either."
She pointed "Look there, second bench, five along."
Joshua did and started with a little shock. Sera was sitting there. But she was also sitting here, next to you.
"That's where I sat when I first came here just to check it out. I knew a lot of this already but a refresher was nice."
Some sort of time manipulation was in use too then. So this classroom is full of "Everyone who'll ever attend this lecture, from the beginning to the end-"
Assuming they didn't just run another session at a different "Meta-time" or however you'd word that.
The teacher arrived once everyone was seated.
Long dark hair, library glasses sitting atop her head and a black scarf around her neck. She looked maybe asian or native american.
"Greetings students." She called out in a bombastic voice "You may call me Miss Nowhere. Though I'll also accept Nowhere-Sensei, Professor Nowhere or Doctor Nowhere.
There's a flash of golden light and there's suddenly a small tube in her hand that she pulls apart, revealing it to be a telescopic pointer. It was at least a meter and a half long and the point glowed slightly.
"Welcome to the introductory lesson on the nature of everything."
She prompts for some applause before going on.
"I was asked to teach by those in charge of the sanctuary to teach because of my experience, while I am not the oldest Renegade, I do have a lot of experience due to the nature of my existence."
She points her pointer up and the light it gives of shifts and projects shapes and colours into the air. A simple question in block letters floated above the stage.
"What is the nature of the Omniverse?"
"What is the nature of the Omniverse?" Miss Nowhere spoke aloud a moment after giving people a chance to read the message for themselves "That is the first question that must be answered. Said answer is quite simple really: Fiction."
Waving the baton like a wand, the words break apart and reform into five spheres, shining out in a rainbow hue.
"Time is strange." She begins "Eternities pass in some worlds while hours pass in others. Time is relative to location, and not just when dealing with high gravity. It makes sense in a way when you look at it, understanding the nature of the Omniverse. It only takes a few seconds to write 'Aeons pass' after all."
…What? Joshua was confused. Was she saying that none of them were real? Was he just writing upon a page in a book? Something about that thought was incredibly uncomfortable.
"There are five core worlds." Miss Nowhere announced "Now, if any of them predate the others is unknown but these worlds are the source of everything. Relative to the rest of existence, time there moves at a crawl but they are able to create everything else. The artists of those worlds are the origin point."
The Omniverse as a concept has existed, relative to those five core worlds, for at least four or five thousand years. Likely earlier, but there weren't many worlds in existence at that point so it's hard to tell. Most of those ancient worlds are also near-extinct at this point, at least in their original forms.
It is in the telling of stories that worlds are born whenever a story is invented and told, the energy that is created flows from the core worlds out into the omniverse, should enough of it come together, a new world is the result."
She took a short break to drink some water before continuing.
"Some terminology should be explained at this point. Many different beings call these things by different names but you should at least be aware of the concepts.
First is the term I've used many times already in this lesson: Core world. Now, not all of you come from core worlds but it is a common enough origin for jump-aware beings. It is a favoured location to recruit from for everyone across the Omniverse as the people there have more potential than others.
Ultimately a core world is just a world that doesn't appear to have an origin. This can be determined by observing if a world has a feed of energy to keep it going. Almost every Jump world has such a thread.
What is that thread made of then? I call it Idea Potentia, or IP. It is the energy generated when a story is written and told. Energy formed from the creative process of imagining what a world must be like. While you're outside of a world, it typically looks like particles of rainbow-hued light."
Waving the baton, she creates an image of a stream of rainbow light, flowing out of one of the planets full of it into another world with a golden core and glass shell.
"The power flows to Jump Worlds, or Story worlds or simply 'Non-core' worlds. These are worlds formed of those thoughts. A full world that exists because humans tell stories about it. That Golden Light within I refer to as Electio Potentia, though many just call it 'Choice points' or 'Choice power.' It's what we steal and Jumpers bargain for from worlds that give greater powers."
She took another drink of water.
"Let's go over this once again to make sure you all understand the basic structure. A core world emits IP which gathers together. Then like a nebula drawing together and igniting into a star, the cloud of IP ignites into a Worldspark. A Worldspark is a world's heart, the core of its existence. Some worlds can brush against their own hearts, for example the Nasuverse calls their Worldspark 'The Root.'
I should note that most worlds have multiple Worldsparks, the loss of any single instance doesn't do much to the others. This means there are always enough worlds to go around, even with the near-infinite number of beings that explore the omniverse.
A Worldspark is similar in more ways than just formation to the heart of a star, though instead of converting Hydrogen to Helium, it's converting IP to EP. As the fusion of hydrogen creates light and heat, the conversion of power creates the world. A sphere of what looks like glass from the outside that contains within it 'the story being told.'
There is another step too of course, when all of the IP is used up and the world has been unable to sustain itself it will collapse and die. This is rare but it creates something as a byproduct. A kind of conceptual pollutant that I call Sequela Potentia, though it's more commonly called Anti-Choice Points. It's also generated whenever CP is used up. In either case the SP will leave the world and drain down in a great storm, the very storm that surrounds the sanctuary as it happens."
So now Joshua understood Gold, Rainbow and Black particles. That was good?
"Now, let's talk about the lifecycle of normal Jumpers, because some of it will be useful to all of you."
The images shifted to a silhouette of a human form. Then next to it a similar body with pointed ears and beside that a quadrupedal dragon.
"Anything with the ability to understand the value of stories can become a Jumper, strictly speaking even that understanding isn't a strict requirement if you're chosen by a strange enough benefactor. With that said around eighty percent of all world travellers are Human or near-human."
A wave of the baton saw a golden thread appear at the center of each silhouette, running up to a giant hand above that looked to be puppeting them.
"Jumpers need to have a Benefactor, this benefactor takes care of all the minor details of being a world traveller, they handle the actual world travel itself, changing between Alt Forms and bargaining with the world with IP to be rewarded with the world's EP. This trade is beneficial for both sides; a world could always use more IP and Jumpers grow via using up EP. Both are better fed after the trade."
The three silhouettes began to glow with a golden aura.
"When a Jumper has journeyed long enough to be a complete story in their own right, they can attempt to spark out, this is an attempt to ignite the IP their story produces to create something akin to a Worldspark within their own core. This is called a Jumper Spark. There are many ways they can do this, each of them unique in some ways yet the same in others."
In the three silhouettes, golden cores formed over each of their hearts.
"Once they reach this stage, a Jumper is free from their benefactor. They will tend to travel through more worlds, improving upon their spark until they reach a point where they become a benefactor themselves, and so their cycle of life continues."
She pushes her Baton closed and the images vanish.
"There is the end of the introductory lesson. Now, I will take questions for the next few minutes."
The hall instantly filled with hands and voices. Joshua had to wait patiently for it to calm down as he heard various questions asked and answered.
Finally there was a Lull when Joshua raised his hand.
"How does time travel affect worlds? Like if you went back in time and changed something, how would it affect the present?"
Miss Nowhere sighed "That's a question better answered by another class, but I'll give it a go. Time, like most other dimensions, only truly exists in relation to a worldspark. So time generally acts in the way that the worldspark says it should. If you go to a world where time can't be changed, you're just as limited to fixed points as the locals- unless you have a perk to bypass that of course. If you went to a world where time was incredibly easy to change, you better be careful that someone doesn't kill your past self."
You nodded "So what about when you left said world, could someone still kill your past self?"
"They could." Miss Nowhere confirmed "Not that it would do anything as the real you would be beyond the reach of the Worldspark's ability to correct history, as you wouldn't be in its world anymore. All they'd be doing is killing a time echo of you. From the moment you leave a world, any version of yourself in other times is basically a native of the world but with your memories. If they would go to leave, they are simply erased upon leaving the world as they only exist because the Worldspark says they should. There are ways to lock them in as their own existence separate from the Worldspark but that's difficult. Some strange Benefactors think making Jumpers out of their past selves is interesting though."
Joshua reflected on that answer for a time. He was drawing a worrying conclusion from it. To confirm his worries, he went over everything once more.
His original plan, when he would reconquer his homeworld, was to wind back time to before everything went wrong to return everyone back to normal. But while that might recreate the world as it was, it would do nothing to save those that were kidnapped and sold off-world.
That… would be quite the problem. He'd need to save each person manually and then only repair time once everyone was back. Of course he'd then have to worry about there being multiple copies of some of them.
…He'd figure that all out later. But he was now thinking time travel wasn't the best way to deal with it.
With the lesson over, everyone headed out. The crowd quickly dispersed along the timeline and Joshusa was left alone with Cogita and Sera again.
As they headed out of the Academy, Joshua realised something.
"I should continue my journey soon, I need to help my world as quickly as I can since time travel won't help."
Sera was less sure though "Well… there's more to it than that."
Joshua had told her about his world so she was probably working on the same amount of information that he was.
"Why?"
"Your world is lost, it has been lost." Sera pointed out "And it's been lost for long enough that there is likely no need to hurry."
"Again, what do you mean?"
Sera looked awkward "There are likely some people who were on your world that have already been taken and broken. Haste won't save them, Regardless of if you get enough power tomorrow or in one hundred years makes no real difference to them."
Joshua was silent at that.
And then…
"What's the point?"
His heart had sunk into a black abyss.
"If I cannot save my world, even with time travel or some other deus ex machina, what is the point of my entire journey?"
Exposition chapter. I'm sorry if it was boring for any of you. Next on the list is Joshua's breakdown. He just realised his purpose was always impossible and that will takes some time to recover.
Oh and also, even though it wasn't the titular character, let me just include this quickly:
"The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed."
Miss Nowhere was a version of Jenny Nowhere, one of the characters in that set.
Let me just include this too: Jenny Everywhere - Wikipedia
Possible trigger warning? Joshua goes through a mental breakdown for the first half of this chapter. I don't think it should trigger anyone, but it is realistic to me (IE: How I think I'd break down if confronted with the "Everything I've done has been pointless" thing.) It gets better (and more fantastical) as the chapter goes on and the chapter ends on an upbeat tone.
It described a character that was devoted to a good goal, a pure goal. World Peace was a good example but it could be anything from the defeat of some great evil to granting humanity immorality.
Those goals could be said to be moral, right?
But while the character's motives are pure, their actions aren't. World peace through mass death, the defeat of an evil through the creation of a greater threat or giving humans immortality at the cost of their souls.
They are a villain, but it was a type of Villain that Joshua had been prepared to become. He had prepared to save his own world no matter the cost. No matter what he'd have to do, no matter how many worlds he'd have to endanger.
Of course, he had been avoiding endangering them where he could, but that didn't mean he wasn't putting them in danger in aid of his goals.
He could have gone back to save them anyway, whatever methods he used to save his world could be used on every other world he'd hurt.
It might even be possible to justify that his world was "more important" than others. He had strong suspicions that his world had been one of the core worlds, one of the only worlds that could be said to matter more than others.
With all of that said though, it only works as a motive if his plan had any chance of actually working.
But it didn't. No matter what secret weapon he found, none of them would ever be enough. Nothing he found on this journey would ever be enough to save his world. And by extension nothing he found would be able to save any of the other worlds he'd endangered either.
It was all pointless. Every last bit of damage he did. Everything from those damages he inflicted upon worlds with each cut of his sparkblade, to the people he was forced to kill who might have been spared if he was more capable or had just not gotten involved.
Then there were the worlds he'd led the Company through. While the company may have planned to take control of all of them eventually, Joshua's mad dash had cut the time those worlds had left down to nothing. And he'd been completely unable or unwilling to help them.
It was indescribable in a way. He had likely accelerated the death or enslavement of billions. That was a crime beyond any other. A punishment that would require worse than the death penalty.
Was he going to keep going? Inflicting more death, damage and suffering upon the worlds he visited?
Whatever else could be said, Joshua's heart and soul were those of a normal human, and a normal human can only put up with so much suffering.
He thought of the people of his world. Not only had he failed to do anything to help them, he would be unable to ever help them.
Those taken as slaves, those who've already died. Those being kept on his homeworld, those who'd been taken to other worlds.
Billions of people he could do nothing to help. Suffering on a scale no normal human can endure.
A villain, a true villain, might take this moment to fall deeper. To simply say "Oh well, I might as well get on with my adventure. It's a pity they can't be saved but if they can't then why should I care anymore."
A villain is one who stops caring.
Joshua hasn't stopped caring. But he is still a monster, far beyond saving. That was how he viewed himself for this.
He couldn't help anyone.
Words echo back to him in his depression.
"There are always more. Your world is just one of many. We… we failed to save this one, but maybe you could save another."
"Please, I must ask a boon from you. Your world has fallen, ensure that no other does. Please."
"I will. I promise."
The discussion he'd had with Elpis as she was dying. He had promised her that he'd help worlds.
He'd failed her, he'd just run. He'd done the precise opposite of her request. He'd just endangered others.
His thoughts circled his brain, spiralling ever deeper into the darkness.
Elpis, the closest thing he had to a benefactor. The being that had given him the only chance he had. The Sparkblade was her legacy and he'd just used it to do harm.
It wasn't just once that he'd broken his promise. With each step he'd taken while fleeing from the company, he'd broken his word once again.
There was no way to undo the damage he'd inflicted either. These would have to be added to the list of crimes that weighed down on him.
A dark thought twisted, he wished for that moment that someone else had been there to be with her in her last moments. Someone who wasn't as much of a coward as Joshua was. Someone who could have actually fulfilled her wish.
And now… what was there to do? Joshua had broken down.
Back in reality, Joshua was near catatonic.
He'd collapsed to the floor, tears dripping down as he pulled himself into a ball. It was childish in a way. He was trying to hide from the world, if only subconsciously. In his mind he'd failed all of existence after all.
Sera and Cogita helped him to his feet and walked (and at times carried) his limp body to a nearby inn.
The Sanctuary had inns of course. Most Renegades lacked something like a Jumper's warehouse to stay in.
Cogita helped him to a room, they'd gotten a cheap one because they didn't know how long he'd be like this.
Instead of lying him down on the bed though, Cogita opened up his briefcase and helped him down into his safe space within it. She walked with him back to the cottage.
Joshua's pokemon came over, concerned about him. Ninetales nuzzled his hand but it didn't prompt any reaction from Joshua.
Cogita brought him up to the bedroom of the cottage and put him down on his own bed. It was hard to tell if he was awake or asleep right now. He twitched in bed, his face wasn't peaceful.
If he dreamed, he would have to be suffering from terrible nightmares.
After a moment, Cogita turned and left. She would go to her own home in the case.
She asked herself a silent question as she left the cottage.
"Was it really wise of me to come on this journey with him?"
Maybe not, but she didn't wish she hadn't. She still had some reasons, even if they were ones she admitted weren't wise.
Words repeated again in the dream.
From his own mouth "Is that it then, is this the end?"
The dream was dark, darker than this scene had been in reality.
All that was here was Elpis. Even Joshua didn't have a real body in this dream.
Elpis shook her head "There are always more. Your world is just one of many. We… we failed to save this one, but maybe you could save another."
He saw that light of hope in her eyes that he'd seen before, but now it seemed like such blind faith. He was just one random person that happened to find her.
Why had she had so much hope in some coward like him?
As her arm rose to cover her heart, she spoke more familiar words.
"Please, I must ask a boon from you. Your world has fallen, ensure that no other does. Please."
If she'd been begging a boon from a braver person then she might have gotten what she wanted. But Joshua was a coward.
He'd learned while in the world of Psychonauts, he'd always been more motivated by his fear and a drive to flee than any kind of actual heroics.
He continued to watch as she once more drew out what he now realised must have been her spark in order to forge the sparkblade. It was right in the name as he now realised.
She'd converted her story, everything she ever was and did, into a tool that he'd been failing to use to uphold her legacy.
"Take this." She said, holding out the blade to empty air as Joshua still couldn't see himself. The blade appeared to levitate and was held up to Joshua's eyes.
"À mon seul désir." My only desire.
The blade's name that he'd thought so little of during his journey.
"I will. I promise." His voice lied.
"That is a sparkblade." His benefactor whispered "I give it to you freely, may it never leave you."
And yet he'd failed her. Elpis breathed her last and he'd fled as soon as he was confronted by Artoria.
The dream went dark again. No one was visible. It was like Joshua was at the very depths of the sea.
"It's all my fault." That was all that remained to him now.
His hope had been killed now that he knew the truth.
It might have been kinder to have never learned, but then he would have just suffered this same pain later.
"Every last thing that happened since her death was all my fault."
"Are you sure about that?"
A voice spoke in that darkness. Elpis' voice.
She'd never said those words to him, so was this just his imagination playing tricks.
"I made the wrong choices each and every time."
"Not every time." The voice countered "Instead of running from MissingNo and abandoning that world, you stood up to fight it even if you didn't understand the proper context."
She continued "And then in final fantasy, you stood up with the returners to oppose Kefka. You helped the homeless after the end of the great war. You sabotaged Voldemort's Horcruxes. You helped free Truman Zanotto of your own will. You helped save Arceus' world."
"So little." Joshua muttered to object "Maybe six good deeds while I led the contractors to ten different worlds. The bad far outweighs the good. As if my deeds were even enough to equal one world."
"Even if you had done nothing, those worlds would have still been invaded. You cannot hold yourself to blame for them in their entirety."
"Typhoid Mary." Joshua noted "Could she not be blamed for all the people that she made sick? Sure, those people could have caught the disease in other ways, but they caught it because she carried it to them."
…Elpis's voice didn't respond at first. Finally there was a forced chuckle from the darkness.
"Then you'll just have to be more careful than she was in the future. Don't let yourself be chased and you'll have the chance to help more worlds."
"Why should I even be given the chance?" Joshua asked "I've already proven that I can't be trusted."
"If you make no mistakes you'll never learn. While this was quite a horrible mistake, I'm sure that you can learn from it."
"Why should I?" Joshua's mind reverted back to the original problem "There's nothing to build towards?"
"Are the good deeds you did manage meaningless to you?"
A light shone down from above, revealing a spectral form of Elpis who was even now fading.
"No matter what, keep moving forward. Keep helping people. When you're strong enough, do what you can for those who remain on the captured worlds. You might not be able to save all of them but I'm sure those you do save will thank you for it."
Joshua's eyes widened and he reached out as his Benefactor vanished into light.
"You called yourself a Monster? I disagree but I have some words you might need to hear: [Go and sin no more]."
Those were her last words to him.
In the morning, Joshua's eyes snapped open in bed. His clothes were coated in sweat from a night full of bad dreams.
Even so, he had a purpose now.
His stomach grumbled but he pushed that thought aside. He left the house and was mobbed by his Pokemon. Getting past them, he climbed up the hills to Cogita's hut.
She was surprised to see him awake.
"Have you made a decision?" She asked him.
Joshua nods "I'm going to keep going, I'm going to do good by as many people as I can. That's the only way I can make up for it. I can't be perfect, but at the least I want to atone for what I did in a proper way."
Cogita smiled softly and nodded.
"Well done."
With Cogita he left the case. They met Sera in the Inn's main hall where breakfast (A full english) was being served. It felt like a new start in a way.
He told Sera of his plan, and asked her if she knew a good way to keep the company from noticing his moves. It would be best if they couldn't chase him after all.
"Time." Sera revealed "If you're moving around too fast it's easy to notice you."
Joshua frowned "But I was staying in place for weeks before, that didn't help."
"It takes years for your trails to fade properly." Sera noted "Ten years, if you want your trail to be indistinguishable from a normal Jumper's. That would prevent the company from being able to track you."
Ten years?
Well, he'd accepted he didn't need to race around anymore. If so… maybe he should think about finding a Jump that would be "easier" for him to handle. Something that would let him get used to staying a while in a world.
The idea of spending a full ten years somewhere though felt strange. He was only (somewhere around) twenty five years old after all. He'd need to pick somewhere he could get used to it properly.
Luckily, Sera actually knew a cluster of worlds that could work for a "vacation" of sorts.
Before he leaves though, Sera also thought Joshua should get a pass. Something that would allow him to come and go from the Sanctuary without having to withstand the storm each time.
Joshua agreed.
They headed out of the inn and towards the main lighthouse of the Sanctuary. On the way to it, Sera told him how the light source in it was many hundreds of artificially created sparks. With their collective power, they were able to keep the sanctuary safe from the storm.
At the base of the lighthouse was a bigger-on-the-inside government building. It was decorated like a castle on the inside but somehow none of it seemed ostentatious.
Reaching the right desk to request a pass would take a while due to all the walking.
On the way though, a group of thuggish-looking people surrounded them.
"Oh, who's this now, someone coming to get a pass?" Thug 1 said.
Thug 2 snickered "That means they must have something valuable on them? Choice power maybe?
Sera stepped forward, raising her sparkblade.
"Get out of our way you goons, you have no right to stop us."
"And you don't have a right to hurt us." Thug 1 noted "That's the rules, right?"
How was this kind of thing happening inside the government building?
Joshua took a breath and drew out his own blade, pointing it at one of the thugs to join with Sera.
Thug 1 smirked "Now then, we'll let you pass, don't worry. But… you know, you have to make it worth our time. Otherwise we could just stand here blocking your way all day. Let's say… fifty thousand miliCP and we'll get out of your way."
"That's absurd." Sera noted.
"It's not." Thug 1 noted "After all, aren't you on your way to get an access pass. They charge fifty thousand too, that means you've got at least that much on you. And if you have some more…"
Thing is, Joshua did have enough to both pay them and get the pass, but right now he couldn't really be bothered.
They were bullies and thieves after all. Highway robbery was a crime.
He jabbed the sparkblade at one of them, Thug 3 to be specific, the one who hadn't spoken yet.
"Get out of our way."
Even the littlest bit of pushback sent them running.
"We'll get you for that, it's breaking the rules!" Thug 2 yelled.
Thug 1 nodded "We'll tell our boss on you!"
"Should I be worried?" Joshua asked Sera.
She shrugged "They weren't proper renegades, just followers of a ROB. I'd say there's little reason to worry but you never know. Let's just try and get through this quickly.
The three of them raced to the counter.
He paid the fifty thousand miliCP and was given an orb of golden light that entered his body.
"It works like any other perk." Sera told him "It's so you can't accidentally lose it and it's incredibly difficult to steal."
Joshua nodded and they left the government building.
"We should probably get out of the Sanctuary soon." Joshua remarks "Just in case their boss has a temper."
Sera nodded "Let's. They'll probably have forgotten about it when we both come back."
Well, you were planning not to return for decades at least so… yeah, hopefully.
Cogita headed back inside the case to be ready for travel and the two renegades ran towards the Sanctuary's "Docks" in order to depart properly.
And there we go. Joshua's not entirely over it but he's better about all of this than he was at the start of the chapter. Now: Was Elpis really there? Probably not. It was really just a dream of Joshua's own hope talking himself into what to do next. That said, Ghost!Elpis did seem to know more than Joshua does…
Ah, I'm sure it won't be important.
I did change the context of Joshua's plan to go on a vacation during the course of writing the chapter. Something like that was always going to be his next intended Jump but originally it was going to be because he still needed time to figure himself out. I decided during the dream sequence though that he'd probably already gotten most of the realisations out of his system.
I've already got a cluster of worlds that could work, though I could always use more ideas.
Terraria, Minecraft and Stardew Valley are all on the list for example. I'm generally picking things that are fairly chill, no big time limit or major plot.
