Venturing the Worlds (Second part of Venturing series / World Hopping)

[vawentine]

i do not know why i don't like zelda/link i think it may be a subconscious thing

Click to shrink...

me neither I'm more into zelda/mipha

 

[Bloodalchemy]

I've to admit I forgot the name, it's one of those silly YA novels, I just watch video reviews(aka mockings) of them, and that particular one just tickled me fancy.

Click to shrink...

My guess was Warframe back during the reign of the Orokin.

A quick google search found Unwind which matches with Magnus calling the event the Unwinding.

 

[GeekGod_of_Speed]

Ruby really hoped Magnus was feeling better, she doubted Pluto would survive much more damage; closer inspection showed that the planetoid would most likely be torn apart next time it moved close enough to another planet.

Her boyfriend, partner and once savior just laid silently in the massive crater he had created. It was quickly filled with half-boiling, half-freezing water. In the distance massive geysers were bleeding the pressure that had accumulated under the layer of ice underground, where the liquid water was.

It was impressive just how hotter the planet's surface had become that none was automatically freezing the moment it reached freedom. Though snow was very slowly starting to fall down.

"Feeling better?" She asked.

He didn't stir, but soon answered, "… not entirely."

After a moment he sat up, letting a sigh that was only audible thanks to the System.

"Can't say I don't understand you." She offered. "That world…" a small shiver went down her spine, that being enough for him to move over and wrap his arms around her, "it brought back some unpleasant memories."

His arms tightened around her figure, it helped.

He hadn't been alone in sealing the dwarf planet's fate, she had certainly done plenty of damage herself. She had let go in ways she hadn't even allowed herself in the training room, even when said room would turn all collateral damage null.

"It was as if everyone in that world decided to go insane and become stupid." He complained. "And what I hate the most is that it was almost logical in how they reached the decision that it was okay to murder kids for their body parts. But of course it was just capitalism once more."

She could only nod. Pluto hadn't been the only collateral damage since they had arrived. The Earth had gained more than once crater after she had learned what they did.

It had taken Lydia to break them out of simply erasing all life on Earth. It would have been so easy too, they had multiple ways to cause the complete extinction of the human race. Crashing the Moon on the surface wasn't even that hard. Or maybe detonate both the Ring of Fire and the supervolcano under Yellowstone. Or Curse them so all dead kids rose and took their pound of flesh, literally.

Funnily enough, they had still ended up Cursing them all. But it had been a Curse of Empathy and Realization. It had forced everyone to realize what they had been allowing and feel empathy for all of those who had been taken. And they had Cursed more than a few people after finding the guilty parties.

Watching people get tore apart by their own body parts was almost cartoonish. Until you saw how messy it was when someone's organs were revealed from the inside. Not that it didn't feel more than cathartic.

And it wasn't as if the Curse would be over, it would remain in Humanity, forcing them to understand each other better. It wouldn't bring world peace, there were too many loopholes to stop people from attacking each other. So they hadn't tried to patch them, people would be people, hopefully they would learn from the warning. The most they had done was balance it with a Boon.

It wasn't big enough to be a Blessing, but it would work to keep things from spiraling out of control.

"Are you going to ask your sibling to come pick the pieces?" She asked.

"No, honestly this World doesn't even deserve that." He admitted. "I did copy a few interesting pieces of tech in organ cloning and organ preservation. But mostly out of novelty, we already have much better stuff on those lines. It's mainly that it's all pure Technology."

A world-shaking earthquake stopped their talk, making the two of them quickly relocate to the Long Fortune.

"Ready to leave, bro?" Orange asked.

"Yeah, we can leave." He said, sounding like he didn't want anything else to do with the World.

But she did. "How bad is it going?" Ruby asked.

"Well, it's bad, but not that bad." Orange said. "While basically ninety percent of the world has stopped due to riots and other disturbances, I've kept the online opinion in the correct direction. By now it should self-sustain itself. I was tempted to leave a VI to keep things going. But I decided it was too much trouble for a place that's not really worth it."

"Do you think they will get things together soon?" Ruby asked, almost hopefully.

"Unfortunately, it'll be a long work. On one hand, they achieved some pretty miraculous medical technology with organ printing and preservation. On the other, they have pits and warehouses of corpses and body parts respectively, on top of having moved from a fix-it to a replace-it mentality and that will be hard to turn back; especially as it's been decades." Orange explained.

Magnus shrugged. "I hope they do it, but honestly I expect them all to suffer for a few years at least and suffer a little less in the medium term." He said. "Letting it all happen doesn't make them innocent. Plus the Tear yourself apart Curse will remain along with the more general one. If someone tries to push for the whole Unwinding or similar again they are going to suffer quite visibly." He said darkly.

He waved the bad mood off. "I'm going to go make something nice for Lydia, I owe her the wake up call." He said as he walked off.

Ruby and Orange just watched him, the latter speaking after he left, "In a way, it's not as bad as what his siblings would have done. Claire would have killed them all, most likely released her monsters after stating the whole reason for it. Milo… he would have been kind, which as you realize, it could have been so much worse."

Ruby could believe that. She had discussed with Magnus before how his brother tackled some problems. Life was as miraculous as it was terrifying, but the idea of Nurture being used to make people feel the true disapproval of a parent. It edged on psychological torture when he could apply it to Humanity itself thanks to his Domain and Psychic power.

As they left the World, she decided that she also needed to do something to clear her mind. Maybe retracting all her Enigmas and just spending the day relaxing in one of the medical hot springs would do her some good.

Click to shrink...

I feel like I've missed something, was this mentioned before?

 

[Melakias]

My guess was Warframe back during the reign of the Orokin.

A quick google search found Unwind which matches with Magnus calling the event the Unwinding.

Click to shrink...

Ah yeah, I should re-read the chapters before posting them I wouldn't recommend the story, it's in the 'how do you work' category of world building, and not in the interesting way, but in the this world's going to last a few more years before it just crashes into itself.

I feel like I've missed something, was this mentioned before?

Click to shrink...

Nope, this is just a snapshot of their travels, basically stopped at a World to stretch their legs and Magnus got triggered badly by the sheer stupidity going on. Magnus does not react well when he comes across this kind of things, but it has ranges from his decision of upend the Wizarding World, to threatening Aizawa in MHA. This was an extreme because of the systematic murder of children.

 

[Knightowl 4183]

The thing about MHA is context, people get riled about how Izuku is treated, and forget that it is written by one who lives in Japan.

In Japan the nail that sticks out is painted and pounded on until it either fits or breaks. Which has roots in its history of having to act as a community in order to survive its various natural disasters.

So someone going off to be a hero can lead to them risking the life of one they are trying to save, and depriving them of hands to dig someone out for example.

So with Quirks having become the norm and Japanese society being one of those "suck it up buttercup" merit based ones... Yeah, he is expected by society to handle his own shit.

Which means that the current in the setting is for the quirkless to either suddenly gain quirks, or just fuck off.

Also known as a society where it is expected of you to contribute by even just being at work, doesn't matter if you just fuck around in your office. It's all about the wellbeing of the group and fuck the individual.

It is also why Deku becomes popular amongst the class, his multiple contributions towards bettering the class...

 

[Melakias]

*snip*

Click to shrink...

It's not that complex in MHA's case, near the end of the arc Magnus get triggered when Aizawa chides him for telling the students that as heroes sooner or later they will lose someone, or even be forced to take a life. Normally it wouldn't have been enough to trigger Magnus, but he was suffering bleed through from Claire who has a shorter temper. He would still have put him in a bad mood, but not enough to try and traumatize him.

 

[Melakias]

Venturing the Worlds ‒ 88

Magnus had still not recovered from his bad mood, even as they were leaving it had felt so easy to just reach into his Shadow and pull the blade to cut the World apart. But it wasn't worth it, they weren't worth it.

At the end he had thought about it long enough to realize he was blowing things out of proportions. Idiocy just pissed him to no end, especially this kind.

But it didn't matter anymore to him, the World was behind them, the buoy left outside would be enough of a mark and held enough of a story for anyone else who wandered close enough.

Unfortunately, it didn't mean that he was in the mood to craft, train or just hang out with the others. Instead he had decided to do something he didn't do frequently, he stepped onto the surface of the Long Fortune.

Though calling it the surface almost felt incorrect given how it didn't exist when looked from certain angles. Because he, just like the ship, was a World in himself, and right there, right at that moment, he was less of a being and more of a World.

He could easily move along the surface of the ship, it wasn't as if there was a sense of speed or acceleration, there was no inertia, no sudden stops. Nothing existed. It could be said that he didn't even exist with a defined form, more of an extension of the Long Fortune.

He sat down, or maybe it was better to say that he reduced his silhouette, or maybe it was better to say he coupled closer to the ship? Descriptions failed in the Outside, there was barely any frame of reference and anything just stopped existing when outside of the ship or his body.

He felt a bit like his sister, or at least it would be better to say that he understood her way of acting a bit more. Claire rarely cared to fix other people, and in most cases she took out the problem and fixed what was left.

Magnus only fell back into it when he found situations in which he felt people were being extremely stupid. Just like in the Wizarding World and now in this latest World. He didn't really care much for the people, he just saw such deeply seated stupidity and got angry.

Thinking about Clair naturally made him think of Milo, by now his brother should have arrived to Ruby's original World. He wondered if they were doing okay. Though that made his mind turn back to his sister, he wondered what she and Akira were doing.

---

(Spoilers for Arachnid)

Akira really wondered if she was the one with the curse and not Clair.

They had arrived at a curious World and it hadn't taken long before they found out it was another World with a whole assassin organization bullshit. Even Ranma's World had a few crazy assassins organizations.

In this case it was all themed around bugs, with a large number of them being underage.

Claire was already taking care of most of them, there had already been a few news stories about people suddenly disappearing in public spaces, blurry videos and other similar events caught on camera. It made her realize that as much as she was bothered by the situation and angered at kids being forced into the killing life, her friend was much more angered.

She looked at the highschool and even from the outside she could sense the problems with it.

"We're already setting up a quarantine procedure." June stated.

She nodded to the Metaloid's comment, she could see the ephemeral barrier around the whole area. "What about Claire?"

"She's finishing up a few things, then will join you here. She said that you're free to go in if you want." June answered.

She nodded again. She couldn't sense anyone in her weight level… Well, maybe one person in the building could be a problem. But the rest were mainly dangerous because of their gimmicks, and even then her body wasn't the same from before she joined Claire in this trip.

"She plans to kill all of them, unless you think she shouldn't?" June asked.

"By them you mean the assassins, no?" June nodded. "I don't think I've much problem with it, but I feel something interesting. There's at least one person there that feels like an outsider. I mean outside of the victims, you guys will be able to deal with them, no?"

June nodded again. "It shouldn't be hard, we have the numbers and skills."

"Okay, then I'm heading inside to check on something." With those last words she jumped a few floors up, using some of the broken windows as steps to get higher and up to the floor she felt that that curious signature.

Her System indicated that a number of security cameras had been hacked and looped to keep her presence secret. It showed just how weird it was that such an extensive security system existed in what appeared to be a normal highschool.

She grimaced at what her nose could smell. She really hoped June and the others could deal with the mess going in the lower floors, no one deserved what was going down there.

It was amazing how even destroyed the place was, it still stood. Akira reached for a wall and ripped a good chunk of it, revealing reinforced steel just a few centimeters under the mundane wall.

Someone had constructed the school with the whole destruction in mind.

It didn't take her much to find the curious energy signature. It appeared someone had blocked all windows in what was marked as a chemistry room. She detected three energy signatures inside. The curious one, a very weak, yet very old, one that she would have said was a dead person, and a more mature and sickly one.

Now the question was, should she break in or sneak in? She could actually sense some danger in the room, so she needed to think things carefully.

Akira thought about it for a few moments before putting her hand on the door and sliding it open, the lock broke with a clean crack and light shone into the poorly-lit room.

The two conscious women inside the room turned instantly to her. One was a teenage girl, a few years younger than her. Her System quickly found her information in the school's database, Alice Fujii. More information quickly trickled into her field of vision, mother committed 'suicide', father missing, uncle committed 'suicide'.

The woman's identity came up as false immediately, but June seemed to be more than up for the task and brought her up as an international assassin called Sasori, scorpion, who used poisons. Akira felt like snorting at the joke.

The one laying cold on the ground was a completely different story. Yoriko Tajima was and wasn't a fake name. The thing was that it was a name that poked its face in history going back decades, definitely not a name that should be attached to an apparently teenage girl. But Akira could sense the age in the body, very curious.

And then there were the near invisible threads of reinforced steel that webbed the whole room. Which makes sense since from what June found, Alice had taken the title of Kumo, spider.

Before she could even speak, she had to react, her left hand drawing a half circle from her waist to her head, hitting the mechanized tail that came flying right towards her neck. A solid impact and the hypodermic needle at the tip of the tail hit the door's frame, the tip of the tail visible dented from the lazy block.

"Rude." Akira said.

"A-another assassin?" Alice said.

"Yes, but no, but also kinda yes, but not really." Akira answered, waving a hand as she easily sidestepped the next stab from Sasori's tail as she easily dodged the multiple wire traps installed all over the room.

Sasori snorted. "Dodge all you want, all I need is one good hit and you will be done." The woman said in a sadistic tone.

Akira raised an eyebrow. "Hit me with what? This?" She asked as she dropped the needle, perfectly severed off the tail.

That seemed to irk the woman who quickly changed her approach to attacking her by using the robotic tail like a blunt weapon. Repeated gongs echoed in the small room as Akira lazily blocked each one of those attacks, slowly walking closer to the woman.

"How come I've never heard of an assassin like you?" Sasori complained as her tail stopped moving.

"Because I'm not from around here." Akira answered.

On a side Alice just watched.

"Then no one will ever hear from you." Sasori said, her face stretching into a rictus of madness as her tail swung down.

Akira tilted her head as her right hand closed all fingers except for the index before it flickered. The tail coming down at her stopped completely dead.

"Uh…?"

"Bakusai Tenketsu." Akira answered. "A move originally created for quarry workers as it only works on hard materials, designed to find the fault lines in an object. It doesn't work for fleshly bodies, but as organically-designed your tail is…" She finished with a smile.

Sasori looked in confusion as the tail started to bloat. One by one the segments of the tail exploded in a controlled fashion, the shrapnel hitting only the woman. She couldn't even scream as her throat was shredded through.

Akira looked at the woman before taking a step forward and stabbing two dozen and four acupuncture points, stopping all bleeding and putting the woman in suspended animation. Otherwise she would have died from bleeding out in just a few minutes. Then she turned to Alice.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

"I… yes…? Who are you?" Alice asked.

"Oh, I totally forgot to present myself, but in my defense, I got interrupted." She said. "I'm Akira Akao, and you, Alice, are very interesting."

That seemed to irk the teenage girl who quickly tried to slap her. "You all…! It's always the same, just because I'm interesting!" She screamed before falling to her knees crying.

"Whoa, calm down, I'm external to this whole thing. Honestly I didn't even know your name, I just found the situation in this school and noticed you." Akira said, trying to calm the girl.

"If you had noticed earlier then Tajima-san would still be alive!" The girl just wailed.

"But she is." Akira said, causing the girl to freeze.

"...what?"

"Yeah, she's actually healing, pretty curious life force she has." Akira answered. "Want me to wake her up?"

"If she's alive, please help her!"

Akira didn't shrug, but she felt close to it, it wasn't like the 'girl' laying on the ground actually needed much help. But permission did allow her to approach her carefully and inspect her.

The 'girl''s body was interesting, physically looking like a teenager, but her life energy was well over a hundred years old. In addition to that her endocrine system was severely mutated, just a basic study provided by her System showed it had affected her body's development and most likely how she had lived for so long. But it wasn't all, there was a barely perceptible mutation all over her skin, her System compared it to the electroreceptive organs on many types of fishes.

Akira easily sneaked a few more points in her body, shutting down these abilities. In the long term this could have repercussions as these biological systems could back up dangerously. But that wouldn't be for days.

She easily moved back when the 'girl' started to recover and Alice rushed forward to hug her.

"Tajima!" The girl hugged the black-haired 'girl'.

"Wuh… A-Alice?" The 'girl' said, sounding lost.

"You're alive!"

Akira smiled, the sight was heartwarming. Even if there was something that felt wrong about the whole thing.

"Well… as heartwarming as this is, I think it's time to get serious, because my friend should be arriving soon. "Akira said, bringing the attention of the two other in the room.

"I'm sorry… but who are you?" Tajima asked.

"I'm Akira Akao, ex assassin, traveling martial artist and sometimes called the Water Fist." She presented herself. "And you are Alice Fujii, also known as Kumo, and you are Yoriko Tajima… or should I call you Boss?"

She smiled as the 'girl' froze as Alice looked confused.

"Wha-what? That makes no sense, Tajima's just a normal girl." Alice stumbled through the words, not wanting to believe it.

But both of them could sense the way the 'girl' had reacted to the revelation. Akira saw some of herself in Alice in more than one way. She hadn't missed how the girl had easily followed each of her movements since she had come into the room. Her eyes had perfectly followed each movement, even when she used Bakusai Tenketsu.

The girl had been holding a strange knife in one hand, but her other hand closed in the same way Akira had used for the technique. The girl's eyes had followed and tried to learn, her reflexes and will to learn was very familiar.

"Hey Alice, want to forget all about this World and come with us?" Akira asked, her full and honest desire.

That seemed to trigger Tajima who snarled. "Who do you think you are to come in here and-" Her words were cut by the noise of a single drop of water.

The sounds deafening and oily as it was the shadows of the ceiling that had dripped that inky substance. It became even more deafening as it became instantly obvious that all noise in the school had ceased.

That familiar weight of a pissed off Claire fell into the building, soaking through everything as if they had suddenly fallen to the deepest part of the ocean. The whole building groaned with each step Claire took into the room.

Akira sensed that over ninety nine percent of the people in the building had instantly passed out from the pressure. Only a few seemed to have resisted, and even then, most of them seemed to be frozen in place.

Claire gave the 'girl' a look and sighed. "Stop trying to understand what goes inside my head, there's no brain for you to read the synaptic releases."

"Whu-what?!" Tajima stammered and laughed awkwardly. It came through as very fake.

"Ruse's up, your organization's been terminated." Claire said in her usual calm tone.

Akira nodded along as she saw a blurb of information, courtesy of June, appear in her field of vision.

The 'girl' didn't speak, instead Alice seemed to recover from the situation and turn to anger.

"Who do you think you are?!" The demure girl's voice rose. Surprising fact as Claire hadn't exactly pulled back on her presence.

"I'm Claire Andes, sometimes called the Abyss Princess, keeper of monsters and many other titles. I am of Water and Darkness. I hold control over Oceans and Abysses." Claire spoke calmly. "We stopped in this World out of curiosity, but it seems that we hit something quite interesting. Though it would be more interesting for one of my brothers." She waved it off.

Akira smiled and quickly spoke when her friend gave her a look, "I gave Alice an invitation to come along because I can't not see myself in her." She explained.

Claire raised an eyebrow as she turned towards Alice. The teenager frowned before pulling on her knife. Akira felt silly for having missed the deployment of the blade. Unfortunately for the teen, whatever she had planned had no effect on Claire.

Dozens of hundreds of hair-thin wires coiled around Claire. A web made of reinforced steel wrapped around her figure and tightened hard enough to sever rebar, or at least severely deform it.

And it failed to even cut through her clothes.

"Yeah, that won't work on someone like me." Claire said.

"What are you?" The question was surprisingly uttered by Alice and Tamija.

"Unique, but if you want me to be specific, not Human may work for you." She explained.

The two of them turned to Akira. "Oh, I'm Human, just extremely trained and slightly modified by personal experiences… and other stuff that would take ages to explain." She answered the unasked question. "Also, it's not like Tamija can't come too, she will just have to learn that she will be a tiny fish in a huge Ocean and there are many fates worse than death."

"Come?… Come where?" The 'girl' asked.

"Out of this World, visiting other Earths, or even other planets." Akira explained honestly. "It's just… I see Alice and I see myself. Assassinated family member, forced into a world of killing, some sort of nearly supernatural body quality."

"You have C.E.C.?!" Alice asked.

Akira raised a finger as her System fed her the information. "Uh, not exactly. But curiously similar. In my case I've extremely reactive reflexes, to the point that I've hurt myself because my body reacted to things I didn't even notice." She explained. "I had to train a lot to master it, and honestly I've found it's only gotten stronger with time."

She wasn't lying, if anything it had started to step into the precognitive, and what Claire had called a Spider Sense due to the power from an American Superhero comic.

"Wait! You would let me come just like that?" Tamija prompted.

Claire shrugged. "Sure, it's not like my family hasn't taken people like you before." She admitted.

"If anything, Claire deals with worse, no? Princess?" Akira's playful tone made her groan.

"Don't remind me of them, even if…" She looked at Sasori's body. "Actually, they may be useful. You're worried about the many people you ordered killed, Tamija?"

Alice looked half confused and half betrayed as the 'girl' just nodded.

With no other words given, Claire's shadow spread out and rippled like the surface of a pool. One filled with deep, dark ink that rippled more as a pair of horns were the first to poke out from those depths.

Pale horns with rings of red and black gave way to a head with dark, oily hair and a skin so white it was chalk. Her eye burned in an ethereal blue and her lips were pulled into a manic grin, barely hidden by the black, abyssal metal muzzle she wore. Her clothes could be described as skin-tight, if they had been clothes, instead they were more akin to a second layer of skin. Similarly the armor was more of a bone growth over her body, black as her hair.

"You called, my princess?" The woman-shaped monster practically purred the question.

"Got you a toy." She dismissively pointed to Sasori. "Make sure she lives whole, as for her mind…" She turned to Akari.

"I'm pretty sure she was already crazy."

Claire nodded. "You heard her, have fun."

"With pleasure." The Abyssal Ship's tongue left little, or too much, to the imagination about the assassin's fate, dragging her into the shadow pool.

"As you can see, I've no problem with your past actions." Claire continued. "So yes, both of you are invited to come. Just take in mind that you will be observed, not that you will be able to affect any of my family, or humans for that matter." She shrugged.

Akari turned to the door. "Looks like we'll have company soon." She noted, not as if Claire hadn't noticed it before her.

Her friend just shrugged. "I'm sure we can take one or two more people." She decided. "Let's move to a better place to talk." She said and moved, the many wires holding in place just snapping free from the spots they had been anchored.

Akari couldn't help but laugh at the surprise of the two teenagers.

"Come on you two, this place is way too dreary and the rest of the crew should be finished dealing with the zombies below." She said and marched after her friend, easily dodging a few of the remaining wires.

She really hoped Alice took the invitation, she would love to test her mettle against her.

---

Magnus walked back into the ship when his sister had asked him to talk.

"What's up?" He asked. "We really aren't there yet, no?"

"Of course not, I would say a couple more weeks. But it looks like a certain almighty alpaca has managed to tap onto the buoy we left outside of his World." She said.

"Oh? I'm not surprised Arceus was capable of that. What do they want?"

"Looks like someone's messing with Time and Space and causing some troublesome ripples through alternate dimensions." Orange explained.

"Doesn't he have Champions for that?"

"Most likely, but it appears he's asking it as a sort-of favor repayment for having let us vacation in his World trouble-less."

Magnus nodded. "Well, it's not like it would be too much of a problem for us. And I like that World, so giving a helping hand wouldn't be a bad idea."

"He already gave us the necessary dimensional directions too."

"Okay then, let's go kick some idiots' asses. I think I could use something a bit more silly after the shitshow that was last World." He said, still a bit sourly even after meditating.

"Gotcha, you should go and hang out with Ruby then." She suggested.

He just nodded. He always forgot that time stopped making sense on the Outside and he had spent way longer than he thought. He missed her and wanted her company quite more.

He had really completely fallen in love with her, no?

 

[shypunk]

thanks for the chapter and for writing.

 

[Melakias]

Venturing the Worlds – 89

Ash glared towards Team Rocket.

It was and was not the Team Rocket he was used to. Yeah, he recognized the usual trio of Jessie, James and Meowth. But he had no idea who the others were. Sure he knew Team Rocket was more than the three fools he usually clashed with, but the habit of the trio had set up a sort-of image.

It was also not the Team Rocket he knew, apparently they came from a different dimension, they had decided to abuse the conflict between Palkia and Dialga to kidnap Pokemons from other dimensions.

"You won't get away with this!" Goh screamed out.

Ash gave his friend a look, and once more a part of him found it so strange to see their alternate versions. Goh's alternate, his own alternate, Dawn and her alternate and Chloe and her alternate. The eight of them stood together against this common threat that was Team Rocket.

"Doesn't matter what you say, twerp, we already got away with ours." The alternate Meowth grand stood in front of them.

"That's right," the alternate James said, "with the gods' powers on our side, we will turn all Pokemon back to eggs before raising them as loyal pokemon for the Rockets' cause."

"And there's nothing you can do about it!" The alternate Jeese cackled, their Wobbufet let out an agreeing cry.

"Show him, boys." James called out.

And just like that the Rockets in front of them started to release their Pokemons, just like the members, each Pokemon was wearing the same equipment as their trainers. Ash recognized that most of them were last evolution and looked quite strong too. Toxicroak, Purugly, Skunktank, Rhyperior, Weezing.

"Pi-ka!" Pikachu jumped off his shoulder, ready for a fight as Ash nodded.

"That's right, we'll show them!"

His friends released his Pokemon too. But it was a fight against time, from what Team Rocket had said a moment earlier, just staying in this place made them all younger by the second, and that went for their Pokemon too. Goh's Cinderace had just gone back to being a Raboot a moment earlier.

"We need to break that chain and stop Dialga and Palkia from fighting." He told his friends.

"I will take care of that!" Goh called out and got onto his Flygoon, but the dragon type glowed before turning back into a Vibrava.

"Just give up you snot-nosed kids, no one will stop Team Rocket from taking over the worlds." One of the grunts called out.

Dawn was about to say something, but the loud sound of glass breaking made everyone look up, even the two Legendaries seemed to react as the air itself exploded out and a figure shot through that cloud of dust.

His eyes took a moment to make sense of the figure quickly falling down. They weren't too tall and the long thing trailing after them turned out to not be a tail but a long braid. The man came down like a falling star, landing on the ground between all of them at a much faster speed than Ash had expected.

The dry, rocky ground cracked and dust rose as the man had landed on one hand, one feet and the knee of his other leg. He slowly pulled himself up and wiped the dust off.

"It's been way too long since I tried the three point super hero landing." His voice made more than one of the people watching nearly face fault.

---

Magnus looked at the situation, behind him was Ash and who he was pretty sure were his friends, and duplicates of each one of them; also their Pokemons by duplicate.

In front of him was a version of Team Rocket, he could practically taste the difference in their dimensional signature. And high above was the pair of idiots the big llama in the sky had asked him to help before they screwed things more.

If Magnus remembered correctly, and his memory was spotless, Space and Time frequently had spats like this. Of course frequent when talking about beings like them was every few millennia, but even that was weird since one of them looked after Time.

It appeared that Team Rocket had gotten a Red Chain to keep the two fighting, the same artifact Ruby had collected to give to him. Though in that case it had been reduced to sand, and it would most likely end up reduced into it this time too. He may end up collecting it too, Ruby shouldn't have too much trouble repeating the magical circle she used originally and it would be a nice gift to take to his duplicate.

As he finished surveying the situation, he pondered how to tackle things. He could certainly cut the Red Chain with a good hit from Hard Truth or Gentle Lie. But that wasn't fun.

"So you are the guys making a mess big enough for the big guy to ask me to help?" He said, using a cocky tone on purpose.

"And who are you exactly?" Meowth asked.

"I'm the Traveler, and apparently given what you guys have been doing I was asked to clean things up." Magnus explained. "And honestly, there's little more that I would want to do, I just hate the kind of thing you are doing here."

"So? There's nothing you can do to stop Team Rocket now." James called out and Wobbufet chimed in. "Just by being here you and your pokemon are growing younger and younger until there's absolutely nothing you can do."

Magnus blinked and chuckled. "Two problems with that." He grinned. "First, I do not have Pokemon, two, an effect like that doesn't actually affect me… and I should."

He turned to the kids and waved over them, his Domain spread out, casting an area of protection. "Stay there kids, and don't worry, all will be okay."

"But without Pokemon you won't be able to do anything." The blue-haired girl, Dawn, said.

"Oh, it's okay." Magnus smiled as he started to change. "Would this fit better?"

"Ah! A Zoroark!" Ash cried out.

"Not really, but I think it fits well enough." Magnus turned back towards Team Rocket.

"A Zoroark? Still doesn't change a thing." James said. "It makes it easier even, it's still one against many."

"Oh! I knew I was forgetting something." Magnus reached for the bracelet around his wrist. "I forgot to take this off." He nearly purred those words as he turned the presence masker off.

Instantly every Pokemon in the area took a step back, even Dialga and Palkia stopped their fighting for a moment to look at him.

"Ah, that's so much better." Magnus said as he cracked his joints. "Now… who will be first?" He made a come-at-me gesture and grinned.

It didn't surprise him much that it was the Toxicroak that stepped forward, most likely they were counting on their Fighting type. Sadly for the frog, before they could even make it half-way to him, Magnus had blinked right in front of them, his fist embedded on the chest piece.

The poor frog's eyes bulged out as the delayed effect of the punch sent them flying back, impacting the Skuntank and sending them rolling onto their trainers.

"You will need much more than that." Magnus taunted, Dark type energy suffusing his words to Taunt them.

The effect was too good, because even the Rocket grunts found themselves rushing towards him, and right into his trap as his Shadow spread out. A massive fox head made from pitch dark rose from it and swallowed all of them.

"And now they will enjoy some nightmares." He said.

"What?!" One of the Dawns cried out.

"Oh, don't worry, it's just childish nightmares, running from a scary pet, forgetting your pants in public or forgetting they had a test." He really didn't push further, and didn't even target the Pokemon as he wasn't sure if they had been raised by the Rockets or they were part of the victims of the whole thing.

Magnus hummed as he turned away from the confused kids and glared towards the four Rockets left. "As for you four."

It seemed like they hadn't been idle, because Meowth had jumped ahead and released what appeared to be a Dark Pulse. Magnus barely needed to bat it away, mostly for show as it wasn't strong enough to deal with the enchantments in his clothes to begin with.

"Look, I will admit I don't mind playing with my food. But you and your Pokemon won't be able to do anything to me." Magnus' tone evened out. "But you're pretty on the edge of ticking me off with your whole plan of breaking friends, families and other similar things apart with this whole plan." His glare was approaching glacial temperatures, nothing like the glares his sister could level out. But it stopped the two human members of the team from throwing out their pokeballs.

Magnus took a step forward and his presence swelled more, still keeping the kids protected. "Now, I want to leave something clear. I was sent because I was around, don't think Arceus doesn't have others capable of taking care of this. He usually leaves it to humans and honestly the kids were on a good path to take care of you lot."

"Yo-you don't s-scare us!" Jessie forced out.

"If I wanted to scare you," Magnus smiled, his beastly fangs showing as his lips parted, "you would have known."

He kept walking forward, with each step he grew larger and larger, soon his face was covered by the usual mask as he looked down at Team Rocket.

"Choose." His word a threat.

Magnus turned away, leaving the four Team Rockets blabbering as the Illusion he had weaved in their perception dug deep enough for the underlying Curse to eat away at the knowledge they had used to craft the protective armor they were wearing. It wasn't like he hadn't acquired a number of them from the previous members.

He shifted back into his normal, human form as he walked towards the trainers.

"Okay kids, all of you are okay?" He asked as he gave them a look, noticing the way the clothes they were wearing were starting to become loose on their bodies.

"We have to free Dialga and Palkia." The kid that looked like Ash cried out.

It took Magnus a moment to find that he was called Goh.

"Oh, right, the two idiots." He noted and launched Hard Truth and Gentle Lie.

Their sudden appearance made the chattering from the kids stop and watch as the two blades drew parallel lines as they flew true. Their composition allowed them to cut through the chain and go past to destroy the rings controlling the two Legendaries.

Instantly the two of them stopped fighting and started to complain about each other, making Magnus roll his eyes. He also activated the collection spell for all that sweet, sweet Red Chain bits.

"There we go." He said.

"Traveler, sir." One of the Dawns spoke carefully.

"Just call me Magnus, the other's a title." He offered gently.

"Ah, Magnus, sir, how will we fix this?" She gestured to herself, the others and their devolved Pokemon.

"Hmm… unfortunately my control over time's not the best, but thankfully we do have one very capable guy up there." Magnus turned towards the Temporal Dragon. "Dialga, come down here!"

He winced slightly as he noticed the kids cover their ears due to his volume. But it was effective as the blue legendary zeroed on him before moving down. Palkia moved down a moment later.

"Mortals, I should have expec-" Magnus didn't let the idiot keep talking as he shifted into his Titan form, easily three times the Legendary dragon and flicked it on the forehead.

"Drop it." He warned them. "Mortals took advantage of you two and mortal kids were more than ready to save your hides. I'm here only because Arceus asked for me to pay back a small favor."

"You are no mortal."

"Big revelation, what do you want to notice next? How about that water's wet? Or that Mew enjoys pranking?" Magnus said dryly. "Doesn't matter, you should fix the temporal problems caused by the spat you had."

He shifted back to human form, not dropping the glare.

"And you don't think you won't have to help too." He turned to Dialga.

The Spatial Dragon snorted. "It's not the first time I've cleaned this idiot's mess."

Magnus rolled his eyes as Palkia instantly reacted and started to complain. He quickly reacted faster and sent Dexter&Sinister to bonk the two dragons.

"I'm not your father, but I will put you two over my knee and spank you. It doesn't matter if you are Space and Time, I will make it True." His words were enough to make the two stiffen up.

Dialga was the first to relent and nod their head, instantly all the devolved Pokemon and deaged Trainers returned to normal. He nodded and released the Rockets he had kept in his shadow, all of them lacking their armors.

Dialga and Palkia shared a look before their power combined and spread out. The Rockets quickly disappeared, most likely sent back to their dimension and time, the many dimensional holes hanging in the air shifted before disappearing.

"Take the humans and their partners back to their dimension, we will need to collapse this pocket space to finish cleaning things up." Palkia asked.

"You heard the Legendary kids, chop chop." Magnus said and guided the kids through the portal that the dragon opened.

"But-"

"Yes, yes, I know you aren't all from the same timeline, but you need to say your goodbyes, don't worry, they will open a way for you four kids and your partners once that's done. Otherwise I will do it and then hunt these two idiots." Magnus answered the unasked question, loud enough for the two Dragons to hear him.

He smiled as he noticed the container had filled quite considerably. Most likely it wasn't even half, but it would have to do. The wasteland was replaced by a green field, an amphitheater not far from where they had come out.

"Uhmm… sir?" The other Dawn spoke up.

"Yes?"

"Uh… sorry to ask this, but what happened?" The girl who was hugging one of those cute little penguins asked carefully.

"Well, to be honest I did kinda steal your thunder, the eight of you more likely had it well handled. But the big guy asked me to solve things faster." 'And most likely berate the Dragons a bit too.' He added internally.

"But if you want to know, I just neutralized Team Rocket, took care of the knowledge they used to mess with dimensions and then glared at the two big Dragons so they fixed the mess as it was originally their fault. Now you just have to say goodbye and head back home."

The kids looked unsure, but it didn't appear that they were brave enough to ask any more questions. Magnus took a step back and allowed them to talk, shake hands and finally part ways. As he had expected, a portal opened up for the four non-native to walk through.

He smiled when he noticed Ruby join his side. "All went well?" She asked.

"Yes, did it look worrying from the outside?"

"No, but I wanted to confirm it." She said and reached for his hand. "We should take a few days, even if we don't head to Alola again, we could use some time out from the Long Fortune."

"Doesn't sound bad, did the three rats already departed?"

"Yes."

The answer made Magnus chuckle. "Looks like they know me pretty well already."

"Orange also gave them permission." She said before turning to look over her shoulder.

"Hmm?" He prompted.

"Looks like the blonde champion I met the last time." She answered.

"Do you want to dodge her? I'm sure we could drag her around the area for a few hours while watching the sights." He offered.

"No, it's not like she can do much to us, and you said it before, this World's not bad, so establishing good relationships is not a bad idea." She answered.

"Okay, let's move to a nice spot before the kids notice I disappeared." He decided as he weaved an illusion around them, letting Cynthia see them walk away.

As it looked like she was heading straight for the kids, they were bound to get some time until she turned her attention to them.

---

It took about thirty minutes before Cynthia came to find them. Neither of them faulted her for taking so long, the champion had to take care of the fallout of the situation, and doing it so in thirty minutes was actually quite impressive.

The kids had forgotten about Magnus by then, helped a bit by a small Lie allowing them to return to what they original plans for the day may have been. Not that they would have been able to find him. Even when they just sat on one of the park's picnic tables.

The blonde champion had looked unsure at first, but after making her mind, she took the position in front of them. Magnus would admit he was surprised by how quickly she caught the fact that no one noticed their presence once she joined them.

"Magnus and Ruby, you two are very hard to find." She said.

"I would imagine so, since we weren't in this World at all." Magnus said in good humor.

"Yes, Professor Kukui mentioned that you had explained it."

"I'm sure you still have questions, so ask away, champion." Magnus offered.

"Yes, I definitely have questions." She eyed them. "First of all, what did you do with the remains of the Red Chain?"

Magnus raised his sleeve. "It went partially towards this work, the rest was used either to bond a number of artifacts to myself or for the creation of two powerful ones."

The blonde champion's eyes opened, gazing at the tattoo he had done to himself. The design had actually grown with time and the number of weapons linked to it, and had done so naturally. By now it extended all the way up to his shoulder. And closer inspection would show it wasn't static, instead the many lines seemed to coil and uncoil, to braid themselves before coming loose, some even grew and retracted.

Magnus was quite proud of his work as it always managed to look good.

"And the artifacts?" She asked curiously, causing Ruby to giggle.

"I don't think it's a good idea to retrieve weapons right now." Magnus said, jovially.

It was visible how Cynthia quickly realized what he had meant. Magnus imagined the kids had mentioned the weapons as Magnus hadn't hidden them when he used them to break the chains.

"Yeah, maybe you're right." The woman admitted and let out a sigh. "… this is harder than I thought. I specialize in the field of archaeology when I'm not busy with my duties as a Champion. But dealing with people like you two feels strangely outside of my abilities."

"We are rarely in anyone's capability to deal with." Ruby said. "It was similar for me too at the start. It's been months and I still find myself getting surprised by certain aspects of my new life from time to time."

"Sounds interesting, but again, as the regional Champion, I don't get as much freedom as I would want. Even if it has helped me in my personal pursuit of archaeology." Cynthia said. "I'm curious to ask what's the weirdest thing you've seen."

"I don't think I should answer that for your mental safety, so I will leave that question to Ruby." Magnus quickly waved away answering.

His girlfriend laughed. "Outside of Magnus and his siblings? Because that would be too long, I would say it's been learning there's something outside of Reality, though there's always more. So I can't say I can't say there won't be weirder in the future."

"Wait till you meet my parents." Magnus joked.

"What's wrong with your parents?" Cynthia asked, curious.

"Well, mainly my father, as he stands in a pretty similar role to Arceus in this World." He answered.

"What?! But that would make you-"

He quickly interrupted her and explained, "My father's no God like Arceus. But he's one of Creation and has similarly fathered many races. He's climbed to a similar role, and that position doesn't come with certain… let's say stipulations."

"What he's saying is that he left his Humanity long behind. Though from what Magnus explained in the past, it wasn't something his father was much attached to to begin with."

"That between many things, champion." Magnus nodded.

"I… wait." Cynthia looked at him. "That sounded strange."

"What did?"

"The way you said Champion." She noted.

"Oh, I apologize if I offended you." Magnus said. "It's mainly because what I call a Champion has specific connotations that can't be used lightly."

Ruby decided to continue for him, "Champions are very special people, usually chosen by the World itself to take care of very large problems. We actually met one of them not long ago and helped them beat a terrible entity."

"Though they can also be Divinely-chosen, it's similar enough, though still different." Magnus added. "I think that Ash boy's definitely a Champion to at least one Legendary."

The blonde woman didn't speak, instead looked to be thinking about something. "… I imagine Champions don't live easy lives, right?"

Both of them nodded.

"Then I can see why you would say he's a Champion, I've read enough files to know that the boy's been in enough incidents to set a record." She said. "Though he also mentioned you were here as a favor for Arceus, no? Wouldn't that make you Champions too?"

"Ah, not really. Outside of very stringent situations, Champions are always locals, there's a certain need for familiarity. We're not from anywhere near, there's also the fact that I fit in the power scale just above Legendaries like Dialga and Palkia if I go all out. Ruby's case is almost as complicated as mine, and my three students are technically claimed by me, so any Higher Power would need to ask me for permission." He explained, the last bit had been done for Team Maus' protection after all.

"The favor was more because Arceus allowed us into this World those months back, and they made sure we weren't bothered during our stay. Though that was mostly because we would have easily tipped any plan they had in place."

"Even when we did our best, Fate will bend with my presence, so some things may have ended differently. It's also why we don't stay in a World for too long unless we intend to take full responsibility for our presence." He said. "Not that we won't interfere, but it takes certain personal decisions as our touch's rarely considered gentle."

"So you will leave soon?" Cynthia asked.

"Not straight away, while we do have a goal, we can take a few days to breathe. I promise we'll try our best to not start trouble… but I will again note that Fate's fickle and we're very heavy things on the fabric of reality."

"Think about it this way, you get a few days to think about more questions." Ruby offered.

Cynthia didn't look entirely bought on the idea, but she sighed and nodded.

The conversation that followed was quite more lighthearted as they took a turn asking the woman a few questions about her role and job. All in all, it turned out to be quite a lovely afternoon.

 

[shypunk]

thanks for the chapter and for writing.

 

[Melakias]

Venturing the Worlds – 90

A sunny day with barely any clouds in the sky was the perfect day for some tourism, which was why Magnus had invited Brianna to come with him to Venice. It wasn't the complete reason, but it certainly added some entertainment to the outing.

"So how did you find the place?" She asked and added, "I mean, outside of you know what."

"I had to do some actual archaeology for it." He half-joked. "I needed to compare a number of old maps of the city, old geological records, local legends and the registry of infrastructure repairs."

It had actually taken a lot of research, and it was only because he knew the entrance to the catacombs was somewhere in the city and that limited the possible area that he could find the proper location.

The key had been looking for spots that hadn't been properly fixed in decades and hadn't shown foundation problems. A remote scanner had been enough to confirm the location of the underwater entrance even before they arrived in the area.

"And I get that you have plans on how to get down there?" She asked next.

For an answer, Magnus retrieved two masks, Zora masks in particular. "I've not had the pleasure of studying the Atlanteans, but I do know a lot of Zora biology. It took some work, but you should be able to use one of these."

Brianna took the offered mask and looked at it. "It feels strangely familiar, it's almost as if…" She looked at it closer, even with the sun above, it was obvious that her eyes were glowing for a moment. "You used something similar to the Werecurse?" She guessed.

"Bingo!" He said. "My Mask works by supporting my ability to shapeshift, yours does something similar. But it's based on the remains of the Werecurse."

"I get it! It effectively acts as a mod, like for a game. When I put this on it will overwrite the Cheetah part of the Curse and turn me into a Were-Zora." She said, snapping her fingers.

"It's less rewriting and more of adding. I'm betting, and hypothesizing, that you will most likely end up either as a catfish or leopard shark." He said it in good humor.

Brianna just rolled her eyes before giving the Mask a second look.

Soon they got to a particular alley away from the tourist transit. Masks came on as both of them jumped into the water, disappearing under the surface.

Magnus was once more a purple-colored Shark Zora, to his size Brianna easily followed. She had turned into a golden-colored Zora, with only half of her body covered in Cheetah spots.

"This feels so strangely natural." She said as they swam fast enough to only be seen for the trails they left behind.

"A big part of the Mask's ability is giving you the necessary knowledge." He explained as they reached the spot and swam down into the barely visible entrance.

It didn't take more than a few seconds at the speed they were swimming for all light to vanish. Or at least until Magnus created a source for them to see.

"We've seen a change in the architecture a few times, each section's age is separated by thousands of years." Bri commented.

"From what I know and what I can gleam from the walls, people have been finding the newest piece and constructing an addition to it. But none managed to go past the oldest part." He said.

They soon reached a dead end, or at least it looked that way. It was actually more of a locked door than a dead end.

"Get ready." He said.

Magnus locked the passage behind them and wrapped an arm around Brianna's waist. She grabbed onto a wall as he unlocked the door. Instantly all water evacuated the small room and was replaced by the cold, dry air of the underground chasm.

"Impressive…" She gawked a bit. "So now what?"

"Now we fly." He said, retrieving a new set of Masks.

Brianna's eyebrows rose and she smiled.

---

Brianna knew speed and knew flying, but flying like this was a whole new thing. She could feel the air currents as her wings caught them and bent them to her own desire.

"This place's huge."

"Yeah, Dwarves never do something small." Magnus joked as he guided her over to an outcrop to land. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay, why do you ask?"

"Because it's the first time you've shapeshifted like this, and as good as I am, I would like to make sure I've not hurt my girlfriend." His words made her blush, which in her current form caused the feathers on her face to poof up.

"If that's the case, yes, I feel fine. I've not felt myself tempted to try things I hadn't considered before. My mind feels clear and I can run a few of the meditative exercises the Balance Mage I saw recommended to me." She said.

"Would you? Please?" He said and she nodded.

She nodded and quickly sat down. Bird legs turned out to be a bit awkward to assume the same meditation position she used normally. It took a couple of tries, but soon found what felt natural enough by sitting sideways.

Once she found herself comfortable she proceeded to control her breath. She counted in her head calmly, bringing herself to a state of calmness. She felt as her plumage flattened as she relaxed. It also made her feel strangely cold for a moment, it wasn't a temperature thing, she already knew the System kept her body temperature comfortable at all times.

There was something in the chasm that was rubbing her the wrong way, something she could barely perceive. But it was still strong enough to make her feel worried.

Thankfully the sensation of a familiar presence against her back reassured her. Magnus' winged arms wrapped around her as a protection that allowed Brianna to focus further in herself.

Thankfully, as she ran through the mental exercise, all came up correct. The only influence she was under was the clear effects of the Mask and how it provided her the knowledge necessary for her new form. It was also completely ignorable if she felt like it. Of course it would make it very hard to move around, and even more to fly.

Her breath was still calm and even as she came out of the meditative state. Though she didn't move, Magnus was currently resting his chin over her shoulder, his body pressing against her back. Even if he was quite smaller than she was, he provided a very reassuring big spoon.

"All good?" His voice came softly near her ear, sending a pleasurable shiver down her spine.

"Yes." She replied. "Ready to continue?"

"I don't think we have to rush, no?" His tone once more sent shivers down her spine.

"Hmm… maybe next time." She decides and stirred enough to allow him to untangle himself off her and stand up.

After a few more minutes of flying she asked, "How much longer?"

"Scans indicate a bit, no more than a minute of flying."

The answer made her nod as she looked at the walls of the chasm, the architecture was once more changing, and the System indicated they were leaving Italy and entering the country of Gracenaria.

"Over there." Magnus pointed towards an opening in the wall.

They landed carefully and both of them removed their masks. "Whoa…" She stared in awe at what appeared to be a combination of temple and tomb.

Just like the rest of the chasm, the area was lit up by some kind of artificial light installation. She was tempted to pick apart some of the flat panels inlaid in the construction to see how it worked. But that wasn't what had their attention.

At the center of the room laid what appeared to be an empty throne, and in the four columns surrounding it, gigantic, humanoid figures.

"Would you do me the favor?" He asked and Brianna nodded.

She walked forward and retrieved a small tablet with an upgraded version of the interface Gina and her had developed years ago when they had dealt with the Dynasty. Her System connected with the tablet and a moment later they got their answer.

"Silicon-based life forms, currently kept in a state of full stasis by what could be called 'rust'. Dynasty symbiotes located, equally in hibernation." She announced.

With that confirmed, they deployed eight containment pylons for each statue. While magically created cages to contain the statues, a powerful Lie effectively made those walls count as solid nothing; a precaution to keep the statues from awakening.

"Now I wonder, these four were definitely either some kind of guard or defense system, so… what sat on the throne?" Brianna asked.

"Well, there's no sign of anything but us having moved in this area but the wind, and I can't see any hidden paths in the walls. So I'm guessing that whoever was in control of this place was either in what now is the chasm, or they are long gone." Magnus speculated. "It could very well be further down the chasm and be one of the living statues the current ruler of Gracenaria found under her castle."

"I think we should at least try to carefully investigate it." Brianna said.

"I agree, we're still early in the timeline so the giant robot should still be buried under the city and the whole spat between Roxy and Trixie shouldn't have escalated yet." He mused.

"That should be, last I checked Roxy was still in jail after her latest attempt to 'take over the skies'. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's all a trick and she's already preparing her next scheme."

"Then we should move, Europe doesn't need a robot kaiju stomping around at the moment."

"What do you have in mind?" She asked.

"If you can interface with the Dynasty Symbiote then you should be able to keep it asleep, Trixie shouldn't know about them. Hopefully that will be long enough for us to work with these four samples and find a way to keep any future recovered Living Statues from making problems." He decided. "Plus, once Milo returns with Fortress Kia, we may be able to fix some of them. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but it's a possibility."

She nodded. "So we fly again?"

"We fly again."

She smiled, she was starting to really like flying like this. She may ask him to set up a date in the sky, maybe find some nice spot in Jade for doing it.

---

The two of them had made sure to neutralize the t-rex robot before returning home, only after a date through the beautiful streets of Venice.

But relaxation soon had to end, and the time to work started. Three of the four statues were being kept in stasis as they studied the fourth.

"The more I study them the more I realize that while they are Dynasty Symbiotes, they are an entirely different version. Not exactly older, but less developed?" Brianna theorized.

"Hmm, maybe it's more that Father Rio's version was just more aggressive? Both samples come from the same place, but he developed his in a different direction. While these developed slightly differently, maybe just not as far."

Brianna nodded and looked away from Magnus, meanwhile he ran one of the Living Statue's chipped bits through a series of study; a Lie keeping the material from interacting with the metal available for the moment.

"You guys interacted with them back when you first met the Dynasty, no? Think we could awaken these and try it too?" He asked.

"Hmm… I don't know if it would be a good idea. We practically got lucky with them as they were against what Rio was doing. But we can't know with these ones." She answered.

"Should we ask Strypp for help then? He's bonded to three of their artifacts and was the vehicle to turn Rio's off." He mused.

"Let's leave that as a plan C, I don't want Brittany getting angry at us for getting her husband in a hard situation… again."

"Yeah, you're right." He said. "Should we bring Gina into it? I imagine using one of her blank bots to give the Symbiote a better body to work with would be useful."

"Hmm… I would have said a Peebot would work, but now that I think about it, maybe a larger body will make it harder for them to get 'lost'."

"That was mainly my idea." He agreed with her.

"But if we're bringing her in, did you fill all the paperwork correctly? She is the director and I know she's a thing for not abusing her position." Bri asked.

"Yes, the location we retrieved them is still effectively under Italy, so the permission I wrote down for Venice counts and Gracenaria has no claim over them." He answered. "Not as much with the T-Rex we definitely did not touch."

He thought about it and added, "Talking about the big robot we did not touch, I think we should mention it to the association of heroes as a heads up. I could certainly do it as I should set up a meeting with them soon, I've left it be for too long." He mused.

Brianna stopped what she was doing and moved over to poke at his side. "No seducing Debra." She warned.

"I've you and Ibis. I think I'm more than happy like this." He replied and dragged her into a hug. "I promise I'm not trying to seduce any other women, at least not on purpose. I will keep the right to flirt as a way to disarm or put someone on their back foot."

She just rolled her eyes. "Talking about Ibis, how's she doing? I'm both glad and a bit worried that she's not been an issue."

"Most of the Hive's busy keeping the plains safe from monster movements, and a small group of them led by my duplicate is exploring slash investigating how the other races of Jade live." He answered calmly. "Ibis' enjoying watching through their eyes."

"So no panic?" She asked, curious about it.

"Only a few old people even remember what Kobolds are. Most just see them as a curiosity." He said. "I will add that I did convince Ibis to only send some of the scouts on the smaller end of the spectrum and crafted some cloaks to make them look a bit more civilized."

"But they are not."

"Baby steps and faking until they make it." He replied with a grin. "Think about it this way, if Ibis gets a better opinion on the races of Jade, then she will see a reason to interact with them. So by making sure the races of Jade see the Psi-Kobolds as a race worth interacting with, they won't dismiss them right off the bat."

"And how is it going exactly?"

"We've been mostly going as tourists, but I managed to guide them closer to where Brod lives by accident. After apologizing to interrupting those three, I laid a powerful Lie over each of them, should keep them out of trouble. Though talking about trouble, I'm thinking on reaching for G'nolga to take out Serpentus before that asshole becomes an actual problem."

"And it's not like anyone in Jade will miss him." Brianna said, trusting him to have a way to deal with the parasite.

"Yup, the fastest the better. Plus since hopefully Brod and his two companions won't be found anytime soon, he won't lead the jailbreak that would have let G'nolga escape and all that." He shrugged, the future was becoming more and more impossible to come each day and each action they took.

Ruby having left the World already marked many fates heavily. For example, from what he had been researching, Tyrant's original plan to take over Jade had failed even more explosively as without Ruby, it had been several times harder to find all the information and coordinate things. Thankfully as Brianna's issues had been addressed properly before the whole event, Gaja hadn't suffered a deadly injury and had been key in stopping the villain.

None of his later plans had managed to reach the same level. Ruby truly had been a godsend for the man. Magnus would need to see if there was a way to give him a chance to redeem himself, the man was honestly just misguided, without her he would most likely only sink deeper. He would need to talk with Old Gina about it, she was honestly better than him at setting those things up.

Thinking about future planning had made him stop to think about different, but still quite similar. What would it mean for him when his original arrived?

In all honesty, Magnus was quite happy with his current life, and Milo had confirmed he wouldn't be re-absorbed. But what would his original do about his plans? They were originally the same person, but this Magnus had definitely developed slightly differently from the one that had visited half a dozen other Worlds.

Was he even needed? Was the other Magnus even needed?

The Wererats and Ruby had some things they had to do. But in all honesty his presence in the World covered practically ninety nine point nine percent of what his original could get up to.

It was also True that he was overthinking things, they would meet and take things as they came. That was, after all, how they did things. He knew his original wanted to return to Hyrule much more than he did, this Magnus felt no connection to said World.

He turned his eye to Brianna as she worked on the Living Statue, it didn't look like she had noticed his internal ruminations. But he hadn't exactly stopped his work, a good part of his mind still on it.

He would think about it later. For now he had a good life and plenty of things to keep himself busy after all.

---

Jonathan once more couldn't help but to think back to the last few months and how everything had changed for him. And at the same time it felt like he was back to his youth, traveling with a pair of curious companions.

Even after months of flying through the Realm together and with all the information he was happy to give, the man was a mystery. Not in the way most mysteries worked, he certainly didn't lack information. Milo had thousands of stories and anecdotes, all of them true, not all of them about himself, but enough to start to form an image of his life. And it was crazy.

The more he heard the more he realized that while Milo knew his life was not like others', it was an understatement.

Jonathan was glad to still have access to his Diary, apparently Milo had simply seen no reason to not link said artifact to his Soul and allow him free access to it. It allowed Jonathan to keep his memories intact and add to them in an active way. This had allowed him to note down all stories and work on his understanding of it during time off in their travels.

Priestess Crescens' story wasn't any less impressive, but at least it was much more linear and understanding. She had been a font of information about the Gardeners, the race that had survived their Universe's end and escaped to the current one.

And it hadn't been only that, Crescens had been there at the start, when the Gardeners had taken the few last survivors of the Gaoblin race. She had met them personally, not a tale passed down a bloodline, she had known them personally, been taught and raised by them.

She had practically become the adoptive daughter of one of them, Mother Ri had been the Gardener buried along with the Key of Oblivion, the whole reason this last tribe of Gaoblins had remained in the Sealed Realm and in the ruinous remains of one of their ships.

She hadn't spent all their time with them, as priestess and leader for her people, she visited her tribe frequently; Jonathan had done so too on a few occasions to break the monotony of their travels. During one of these visits they had been greatly surprised to find that new young Gaoblins had been born.

"Quoting an old movie: Life finds a way." Milo had said. "I'm a source of Life, you expected things to stay as they were?"

It wasn't just that every Gaoblin in the tribe was enjoying good health, even the oldest ones were feeling spry. But it was also the new births that had been completely without complications and more than one had been multiple births; something not seen as long as Crescens remembered.

It helped that there was plenty of good food and water inside Milo's Soul.

But as good as the mood got with that news, the situation turned much more somber once they found the first sign of Fortress Kia's presence.

They had found what appeared to be a scout or lone hunter, the sight made Jonathan's temper flare. But it was little compared to the tiny moment of terror that he felt when Milo observed closer.

"A purpose, corrupted." Those words had sang like a gong.

The scout rode some kind of winged reptile, both of them barely gave any show of what they had been before. Instead they had been transformed, turned into living machines of black metal and red energy.

Milo had simply taken them out after a few moments.

"We're almost there, keep close, it will be much more dangerous from now on." His words marked the change of the journey.

The end was coming soon, it meant he would meet his family once more. But it also meant the most dangerous part was coming.

 

[Melakias]

Little post-chapter author note: Unfortunately I've been having a very hard time getting in the mood of writing lately, buffer's ran down to just 5 more chapters and I just have not felt like writing this project much. So instead of hitting my face against this wall, I'm going to try and tackle one of the two other projects I've laying around, I really hope that diversifying things for a while may get me out of this rut.
Sadly, that will most likely end up putting this story in hiatus once those five chapters are released, I wish I could continue with uninterrupted release, but my muse (I'm lying, I love my muse, it's just me the problem) has abandoned me for a while. Hopefully I will get back into writing mood as I do have plenty of ideas for the next arc, it's just the current one I'm not working out well.

 

[asmodyne]

Fair enough! And if I'm honest, I love Junk Emporium, Head, Flair and Wild, but I also have to agree that this has been dragging a bit - I find myself more tempted to skip the Gold Digger world stuff each time to get to Magnus or Link's adventures. Looking forward to what you decide to put out next though! And will continue to read this as it comes regardless.

 

[WCSII]

I mean, considering that your writing style seems to focus on addressing problems, but also not being all that enthused with complicated content... I can totally see why you've burnt out on this story. Most of the stories you seem to read for fun don't need fixing, per se, and the few that do are rarely simple worlds. So, you've run up against the "Yes, but what will the MC do?" with most of the worlds you're familiar enough with to comfortably write about.

Which is actually kind of strange/weird. The stories you're familiar with are stories that can, and often do sort themselves out. Maybe could use some outside help to get a better outcome; but don't necessarily need it. The few that do, even if it can/does work out in the end, are the complicated sort that you don't like focus on, despite the fact that you did just that for both Gold Digger and Worm. And working on both of those just burnt you hard, quick, and badly. So, even if you demonstrate an awareness of other franchises that do need help, but don't work things out for themselves; easily, if at all. You apparently have... opinions regarding. Case in point being that world of Harry Potter, that you even mentioned, In Character, that it was a world that only managed to get that bad because the people were borderline to stupid to live. And that's a world that's simple, but needs harsh intervention to fix... and you apparently don't like those. I assume because you don't like what it brings out in you.


But, yeah. As long as complicated fix its burn you out trying to keep it all affixed in your mind, and those that can't resolve the issue of their own literally being sustained by plot holes, and incongruities... You're just going to keep running into this specific problem each time you write a story. And apparently when you reach a point that the MC can just negligently wave their hand to fix problems in setting... you also start getting bored. Means that the ones that don't burn you out end up losing your interest because the reason for writing them no longer applies. And for some reason you're very adverse to even attempting to write "non human" perspectives. Especially from the perspective of a former human having to acknowledge, accept, and adapt to the non human portion of their growth.



So, yeah~. As long as those remain a hard no for you, this "I'm ending it here" habit is just going to keep repeating. I mean, they're usually interesting when you focus on something, story wise, but when you start wondering in thought and intent it gets a little difficult to read. And then you start a new one. I'll likely still read most things that you write. But, again, I gotta point out; not addressing why, or avoiding certain issues because of... whatever (not enough data to determine why badly done idiot plots make you rage; or why you flee in existential terror at writing inhuman PoVs) Is just going to keep this cycle going, and you'll just keep finding yourself in rut, after rut, after rut, after rut. If you're using planners, or notebooks (of any variety) for writing, then there isn't much that can be done regarding complex settings. Those are just always going to be a brain drain for you short of learning meditation and mnemonic memory techniques.

{Edit}And no, the MC was still largely from a human perspective. And the few times that the MC, it's off shoot, and their siblings do anything that others might consider not human... it's from that outside character's perspective, as much to indicate that they think it's not normal, as it is that the non human characters wouldn't know that the "humans" think it's not normal. That's not really addressing a non human PoV. Which you stopped writing Both Junk and last one once the MC PoVs reached that point that they'd have to start shifting to fit, and acknowledge. And even here, in order to "point out" that things they do isn't "normal" you rely on external PoVs to point it out. Instead of the obvious explain what was done, and the MC not giving it much thought, because to the MC that/this is normal to them. I assume that because the MC would be inured to their own behavior/capability; that you somehow had trouble trying to figure out to point out that what they did wouldn't be normal.

When beings get to that level, it's somewhat obvious to the reader that it's not something that mere mortals would consider normal. You could literally have just had them think about it while doing the deed, and then move on. It would have conveyed it not being "human" well enough just by the behavior acknowledging it as "normal" for the character. Instead of taking the time to get a second character's PoV to call it out.



{PS}It just occurred to me. The biggest issue you have with writing these is power scaling. So, the best thing I can suggest to help with that is an alternatively nerfed Inspired Inventor, or a properly done Tinker of Fiction (not "adjusted" for aiding in forcing drama for writers that can't or don't trust themselves to properly write drama) For Inspired Inventor, go for the five charges a day. But each charge is only a single year of training. Either in the "theoretical" knowledge, or in practical application

For Tinker of Fiction. The selected Franchise a.) doesn't come with whatever unobtanium they use for tricks, unless said unobtanium is moderately explained in how to create. b.) doesn't have a time limit per se to glean information from. The trade off is that the length of time spent learning (Mostly adapting current or previous knowledge once gained from assembly) which does include the download times when done assembling selected items. Informs the length of time between new franchise selections. Meaning that the MC can spend however long they want with a franchise, and only the time spent toward building, and adapting builds determines how long they have to wait for new tech trees. And knowledge of items are only to subjects directly pertaining, so that it doesn't power creep into large swaths of abilities.

Do you think those two suggestions would help you with future stories?



{Edit2}No matter how many times I reread this... I can't see where my phrasing supposedly brow beats others into agreeing with me. Recently, on another board, I likewise went on a ramble about what I see when putting together my recollection of [an] author's comments, and work. While it was in response to that author fishing for... some kind of commentary, it wasn't particularly meant to be high, heavy, or backhanded like I was accused of over there. If anything it was a much more concise observation, that was exceedingly short(er) than this one. But both were just me rambling, and trying to keep to a point.

So... can anyone willing, point out how such a rambling... rant (that I hope is for want of a better description) would be supposed to brow beat others into agreeing with my opinion?

 

[shypunk]

thanks for the chapter and for writing.

 

[Melakias]

Fair enough! And if I'm honest, I love Junk Emporium, Head, Flair and Wild, but I also have to agree that this has been dragging a bit - I find myself more tempted to skip the Gold Digger world stuff each time to get to Magnus or Link's adventures. Looking forward to what you decide to put out next though! And will continue to read this as it comes regardless.

Click to shrink...

Yup, the idea was to have it between 50 to 70 chapters, but like with poorly planned things, it ran longer. I'll try to finish before chapter 100, but, again, just not managing to make it work.

*snip*

Click to shrink...

Don't worry, it hurts, but it's the truth, I know some of the problems with my writing, I try to slowly improve project by project. Some of what you said is definitely stuff I'm trying to keep in mind.

 

[Melakias]

Venturing the Worlds – 91

The Retreat, a pocket Realm created shortly before Magic waned off in the Earth Realm. A tiny, concentrated slice of what it had been, protected. And the very nature of the protections that keep the pocket Realm existing has led to its second use, a prison.

As far as G'nolga knew, the place was practically ruled by Queen T'mat, and while she left the every day to her subordinates, at the end of the day, her word was rule.

Or that was G'nolga heard from the guards when they felt chatty. She spent most of her day either meditating, exercising or observing the outside through the tiny window slits her room had.

It wasn't like she had any way to escape, even if she could ditch the enchanted chains, there were only a tiny few exits to the Realm, and the moment she left her cell without permission they would be closing tighter than T'mat's asshole.

She could wait, the truth was that there was no fool-proof prison, no inexcapable box, and for a Dwarf she was still young. She could wait and take advantage of the situation once things happened. Even if her title could be denied, she was still one of Jade's Weaponmasters in skill.

Or she should, because there was an unknown man sitting in the other corner of the room watching her. And she didn't remember seeing him come in; no one should have been able to visit her outside of the guards and her sister.

She couldn't help but to feel that he was dangerous. The man looked too soft to be dangerous. But she knew better that appearances could be deceiving, and her hunch was screaming that the man could kill her. She didn't know how or why, just that he was capable of it. After all, he had allowed himself to be seen by her.

She frowned when he smiled, as if he could tell what she was thinking.

She didn't react more than that, looking away and just waiting.

"Don't worry, right now they only see you meditating as usual." His words made her turn slowly. "I'm Magnus, though I also go by the Teacher. A pleasure meeting you Weaponmaster G'nolga."

She rolled her eyes. "Really? I was pretty sure that magic capable of that would be easily seen through here."

"Oh, I'm not using Magic. I'm just exploiting the fact that everyone wants to believe that it's impossible to break into this place without their knowledge. It's very easy to Lie when they want to believe it's True."

G'nolga looked around, it certainly didn't appear as if any alarm had been raised, maybe there was some truth in his words.

"And what do you want? I'm done being a patsy for some random guy with big plans." She said.

The man chuckled. "Oh, nothing like that. It's more like I want to help with your plan."

G'nolga slowly fixed her posture and sat facing him. "And what do you think my plan is?"

"Kill Serpentus, obviously."

She stiffened and nearly jumped off her spot. "What do you think you know about that?!" She still screamed at him.

A moment later she winced, expecting the alarms to blare or the guards to check on her. But nothing happened, instead the man just sat there.

"I know they use the banned Reaper Magic, and I also know that even if you killed them, it would mean nothing as they are capable of body-jumping." Magnus said. "But I know that the whole situation with the council of Jade makes it impossible for anyone to 'legally' take that blight off the land."

G'nolga spit. "At least I agree with that."

"Hmm, that's why I decided to give you the chance to leave this cell and finally take that monster out once and for all."

She snorted. "And why would I help you? What do you get out of it?"

"I get access to the network and the information you acquired, and you get to get out of here and put that asshole into the ground permanently."

She glared at him, not like it seemed to do much. The man kept a placid smile and detached attitude as he waited for her response.

After some thinking she let out a sigh. "...okay, take me out of here." She decided. "So how are we leaving?"

"Excellent." The man walked forward and offered his hand to her.

She gave him a look before rolling her eyes and grabbing his hand. Her sense of danger pinged a moment too late as her hand suddenly felt glued to his before the two of them were pulled away without moving.

It felt as if she had been suddenly squeezed through a tiny hole and came out the side as a long noodle before she was back to normal. Her stomach squeezed and it was only the fact that she hadn't eaten yet that she didn't end up puking out.

"Fuck!" She cursed as the acid reflux his the back of her throat.

She snatched the glass of water that was offered to her and emptied it before noticing that the woman that had handed it over was familiar.

"You… Diggers, right?" She asked.

"Brianna Digger, yeah. Good to see that being imprisoned didn't ruin your memory too much, G'nolga."

"I don't see your mother around, so I get that she doesn't know I was broken out?"

"Everyone believes you are still in your cell, G'nolga." Magnus said as he approached them. "There's a very convincing Illusion left in the cell, it will last until I say so or it gets violently dispelled. But until then everyone should believe it's a better idea to not touch it."

"And how do you even managed that? I'm pretty sure Illusions shouldn't work like that." G'nolga said.

"They do when I add a bit of Truth and Lie… but that doesn't matter right now." He said and changed the subject as he threw a weapon to her.

She snatched it off the air and froze at how good the weapon felt on her hand.

It was a long staff, but she could easily see how it unlocked into a three-section staff. The balance was impossibly more than perfect, the craftsmanship was simple and functional, just like how she liked it.

She swung it around, it cut through the air making no sound. "Impressive."

"I'm glad you like my work, it should withstand a lot of use since I worked hard to make the material as indestructible as possible. It even survived a hit from The Soul Edge."

G'nolga raised an eyebrow, not entirely believing the weapon she had could survive such a legendary weapon, or that the man in front of him actually had it. Legends say that said sword had been lost to time. But… weirder things had happened in the last few minutes, no?

Her fingers slid along the staff and found the small mark, her calloused fingers recognized the mark of a blade trying to cut on the staff. It had a strange sensation, so even if the true thing hadn't been used, the quality of both weapons was assured.

"So now what?" She asked.

"First is getting you back to fitness and then helping you get in contact with whatever allies available you have before we go kill that snake." Magnus said.

G'nolga wondered why the thought excited her so much.

---

Magnus walked into the normal-looking office building, a pretty standard construction of glass and steel like the one he had memories of existing in nine out of ten modern Worlds out there.

The inside of the reception area was almost mundanely boring. But Magnus could see through the Lies, just the receptionist woman behind the counter was more than ready to fight if the many weapons he noticed hidden in hand's reach were a sign. There were also at least ninety two cameras tracking him if his System was correct, and he had been scanned in at least half a dozen different ways between the door and the desk.

Once the receptionist confirmed his identification she indicated him an elevator. Once more, while it looked mundane, Magnus could feel the extremely reinforced frame capable of lifting a few elephants if necessary. He wondered if it was a need due to some particular people or just a security measure.

The way up was swift and accompanied by a gentle tune that barely reached the annoying by the time the door opened. An attempt to off-balance him maybe?

Or maybe it was the chocolate-skinned, orange-haired, amazonian woman in a pencil skirt and suit whose buttons threatened the eyes of anyone in the vicinity. Magnus penned her as someone in punishment duty if the normal-sized desk and chair was any indication when she was at least three meters tall.

She gave him a measuring look before nodding. It was good enough as a sign for him to approach.

"Magnus Traveler, Debra's waiting for you inside." She said in a business tone.

He politely ignored the look she kept on him as he passed by her and entered the office.

The room he entered was sparse in decoration, but quite tasteful, in all honesty the main virtue was the massive window that provided a panoramic view of the city. The Dragon princess awaited her on the other side of a modest desk.

"Magnus, thank you for coming." She greeted him.

"It's not a problem, I had some free time while my brother finished some things." He replied as he took the chair in front of her.

She looked surprised for a moment. "I think you mentioned him, but he's already here?"

"Yes and no, he arrived a couple weeks ago. But I asked him to deal with a problem he was much better fit in dealing with. Unfortunately it deals with a different Realm, and the qualities of it make it hard for him to return until it's finished." He explained.

"That's…" She quickly shook it off and smiled. "Never mind, we've run tests on the potions you handed us, we've confirmed their effect and we've decided we would be more than interested in setting up a way to acquire more."

She pushed over a contract over the desk, letting him read through it.

He took a couple of minutes to read through it before deciding to accept it. It was quite fair and given the extensive stock-life on the potions, it was mainly based on making sure they could keep a number and provide more in case of large-scale emergencies. And thinking about large-scale emergencies.

"Oh, reading this reminded me." He pulled a folder from his Inventory and handed it over. "We didn't find something underground under the neighboring country from the one we actually had permission to actually study in."

Debra raised an eyebrow and reached for the file, eyeing the first few lines before giving him another look and rushed through it faster.

As he finished signing his part of the deal, she let out a sigh and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Tell me more, because you've certainly left many details off these pages… and no, it won't be official." She added.

He nodded and proceeded to tell the events of a couple days prior. Obviously leaving out the fact that they knew of the threat before going in.

"… we are still decoding the logs, but we're pretty sure that we're talking about a crashed Dynasty's ship from before Magic left the Earth Realm if the Dwarven construction is any sign of it. Now why the ship hadn't been scavenged yet we're not sure, the main theory is that whatever security system didn't stop working until after Magic left, and by then most didn't visit the oldest part of the ruins anymore."

"And this… giant robot?"

"They must have unearthed one of the 'statues' we found and allowed it to come in contact with machinery, the Symbiote would have aimed to cannibalize said technology to repair itself, adapting to them in the process." He reached for the files and pulled a small pamphlet he had added. "It's just the case that the country had a dinosaur museum with life-sized animatronics."

Debra looked at him before opening her computer and spending two minutes looking into it. "And one of their largest examples was taken off the museum for repairs."

"They may have accidentally awakened one of the statues while moving it and then decided to experiment with it. The only thing I can assure you is that Brianna used an improved version of the same program that was used back when they first met with the Dynasty to ask said Symbiotes to not act for the moment. But I can't promise how well it will last as they have already remodeled the machine."

"And you didn't do more?"

"While I won't Lie and say we couldn't have just taken the whole thing. But given some of the information about the country and previous 'predispositions' we decided to not touch it." He left it pretty clear that he thought the woman in power was more than a bit unhinged. Smart, but unhinged, just like her sister.

"And for that you have our gratitude." Debra said, maybe a bit drier than she intended. "In your honest opinion, why do you think they made it?"

"Half because they could, half because Gracenaria's current leader is sister to known terrorist Dark Bird, and while they do not have the best of relationships between them, I don't think they are that different from each other."

Debra could easily connect the point and sighed.

"On the good side, it should be quite a match to any giant monster that could attack Europe. It just sucks that the country's practically land-locked." He added.

"Well, at least we know about it now."

"On better news." He handed over a small, lacquered box.

"Is this…?"

"Yes, it's the enchanted accessory to reinforce the user's eyes." He gestured to the box.

She opened the box carefully, inside was a silver ring with a single red stone, a Ruby. A small circle projected in front of her eye as she inspected the piece. "Impressive."

"There's one other item I should pass to you, though I will be handing it to D'bra." He said and retrieved a much larger box, reinforced physically and magically. "I would recommend only letting a few people know you have it."

The Dragon princess looked at him before pulling it closer and opening, she instantly froze and closed the box with a livid expression.

"How the fuck you got this?!"

"An impossibility." He answered, earning himself a glare. "I mean it, I can't explain how I acquired it because it should be impossible for the sword to be acquirable. But here we are."

It seemed like she was quickly getting a headache. "And why would you give it to me?"

"Multiple reasons, first, it's useless for me. I already studied it as much as I could, it's an impressive piece and above anything I can currently make, but… that's temporary and I prefer to use weapons I made myself." He answered. "Second, I honestly think you are both worthy of trust and capable enough to hold the weapon safely, along with being smart enough to know if it's necessary to use. Third, uh… I honestly didn't think there was a need for another reason, the first two are good enough for me."

Debra opened the box to give the sword another look before closing it. "Okay, I will take it. It's certainly reassuring to know where it is."

"Excellent, now I think we could discuss the number and delivery of potions."

She let out a sigh of relief, happily moving onto the subject that would most likely take only a few more minutes to discuss.

---

It was three hours later and Debra had decided to go full into princess-mode for the negotiations. Magnus was pretty sure it had been revenge from her part.

Thankfully that was done and now he was blowing off some stress by sparring with G'nolga.

The Dwarf woman parried Iris' swing, the whipsword wasn't entirely repelled. Instead the flexible weapon bounced against nothing and attacked a second time. The second attack was perfectly timed by the Ax he had thrown, forcing her to unlock her staff and block both of them at the same time.

With a small kiai she parried both attacks at the same time before taking a step back and panting.

"I'm either rustier than I thought, or you are the most annoying fighter ever." She said.

"I'm a master of all weapons." He proudly said. "I simply decided for a more exotic one since it's easier to surprise people with them."

"I can agree, I have only met a few Whip Sword users before, and even then none that used it as naturally as you do." She praised him. "But it felt like something was missing."

"Oh, it's because it's enchanted." Magnus said and with a flick of his wrist Iris shot towards one of the targets.

Instantly the target caught on fire, froze, melted, was shocked, crushed down and twisted. And all of those were just because only a few segments had hit it.

She just gave him the stink-eye.

"I mostly use it in combination with the Grimoire," he made the enchanted book appear with a gesture of his other hand, "though it's not as much a weapon as a set-up tool."

"I can't say I've much appreciation for Magic, just a healthy respect. But I didn't know a Human as young as you could have mastered so many fields to such an extent."

"Oh, I'm not Human, never was, never will be." He shifted a hand into a furry, clawed paw. "And no, I'm not a Were, I was created by my father nearly from the ground up."

"So you're a crazy guy's personal project?" She joked.

"Crazy? Totally, but more that he and my mothers wanted children and they weren't biologically compatible. So he used the three of them to create children, I'm just a third of that."

G'nolga just sighed. "Okay, complicated."

"Anyways, how are things going for you? Any contact working?" He asked.

"It's going, it's a bit harder when everyone believes I'm still imprisoned in the Retreat. But it's going, I'm thinking three weeks to a month before I can get everything in place to move."

He thought about it, there wasn't much in the next few months. "That won't be a problem, I can be patient."

"Good, I would have offered another sparring if you were impatient." She said with a cocky smile.

He grinned. "Oh, I'm always up for a sparring, and if you're feeling up to it," he retrieved a number of masks before channeling his power through them, allowing the Shadows to take form, "we can always see how you would do against groups."

G'nolga didn't lose the grin, but she took a step back as she prepared herself.

"Maybe you are as crazy as your father." She said as she prepared for the multiple opponents.

 

[shypunk]

thanks for the chapter and for writing.nothing wrong with crazy as long as it isn't a harmful or detrimental type of crazy

 

[Melakias]

Venturing the Worlds – 92

"I've to say that I love the atmosphere." Magnus teased G'nolga as the two of them, plus half a dozen Psi-kobolds scouts that the Dwarf woman knew nothing about.

It had taken some work, but taking some inspiration from his sister and some work along Ibis, they had managed to allow the smaller and stealthier Psi-kobolds to merge into his shadow and become untraceable.

While it wasn't necessary, just him was more than enough to devour the troublesome Orkist Tyrant. But there was always the matter of the act he liked to keep going. There was also the fact that this allowed Ibis to not only feel included, but also see some of the worst side of Jade. And as counterproductive it sounded, knowing and seeing that there were bad sides to the Realm helped soothe some of her worries.

"Shut up." G'nolga said through her teeth, almost growling. "You sure love the sound of your voice, eh? I should have known my first impression of you was right. These last two months have been the most fruitful and frustrating I've had."

"Look on the bright side, after this is done we won't have a reason to remain in the same are for long periods."

"Don't worry, I'm sure I'll miss your presence very much." She stated sarcastically as they soon reached the clearing, a small number of people were already there.

It wasn't entirely a surprise to see kinda familiar figures. Four of the five people that would have originally been there, the only one missing was the villain Slasher, the woman was still jailed in the Earth Realm as far as he knew.

The others were Hanza, previously Hanzo, a mercenary that had decided to drink the wrong potion. Gaining an impressive physical strength, but losing much in the process.

The Lywi siblings, two Werejaguars, scouts, rogues, and well known thieves. He had actually heard of the two, Kit and Kat, from Gar during one of his visits to Jade, troublesome, though mainly because they had kept themselves from being caught for so long.

Finally there was Cruk, the cloaked man outmassed everyone else in the clearing outside of Magnus by at least four or five times in mass. He was a Blister Titan, or as they were rudely called before, Wart Ogre. Their race was famed for their physical might, and Cruk had refined it to a lethal edge by training as a Samurai, and survived hundreds of campaigns during some of the earlier ages of Jade.

"You're finally here, and you brought company?" Hanza greeted in an acid tone.

G'nolga pointedly ignored the mercenary and turned to Cruk and quickly presented Magnus to everyone in the clearing and vice-versa. The siblings looked almost bored, but there was a hint of excitement under it, tampered with the patience of years and the promise of revenge. Hanza kept shooting glares at him and Cruk had just given him a wary look; definitely the most experience between them.

"Looks like you found good help." Cruk spoke. Magnus was surprised by how deep the language he used was, it seemed to be a more archaic version of Jade's current language. But there was more there he couldn't catch without a larger sample. "If he's the reason why you're and are not still in the Retreat, he could very well help us in today's mission."

"Yes, I told you before, Cruk, I discussed it with Magnus and we can still do something similar to your original plan." She agreed.

"Good, then we'll be moving soon, while your sister as a balance mage would have worked better, if we can sneak directly into his chamber and keep anyone else from noticing us then we can do as we planned."

"Wait, what do you mean by that?" Hanza interrupted.

Magnus gave G'nolga a look, the Dwarf sighed, but nodded.

"I've developed an untraceable teleportation method along with being one of, if not the best Illusionists in Jade and near Realms." He said.

Hanza snorted. "So you can make people see th-" Her words died in her mouth as a simple Illusion made her choke.

"Just like that." Magnus said. "I can extend Illusions to the five senses and a bit more." An understatement. "Even an experienced fighter would be off-put if they suddenly feel things that aren't True. How does it feel to suddenly run out of air?"

Hanza's glare only grew more hateful as she tried to move forward, only to be stopped by G'nolga. "Don't try it, he can fight me one on one and not lose." She warned the mercenary, the comment earning him a second look from the Were siblings.

"Returning to the plan." Magnus retrieved a small number of boxes and threw the others one each. "These are sealing blades, once we've our target in place, we'll need to use these to make sure he doesn't escape when killed."

"Wait, what do you mean by that?" Kit asked.

"It appears the bastard's not happy enough to just be a Shade Reaper, but he perverted his Soul so it can jump bodies when his current one dies." The looks he got made it clear they understood the problem. "Those will erect a barrier trapping any Soul and Soul-like entity, allowing it to be killed."

"I like that idea." Hanza grinned. "I'm all up for knowing that the bastard will die and not escape through our fingers."

Cruk just nodded as he studied the small blade appreciatively.

"The only problem is that the blades need a drop of blood from our target to make sure it only locks him inside, otherwise anyone that ends inside the formation will be stuck along." Magnus noted, earning a serious nod from everyone.

"If everyone's ready." G'nolga said before giving him a nod.

"Okay, I'm opening the way and masking our presence." He said.

With that sign, Magnus focused on his version of the Psi-snail's planar jump. He had modified it a bit already to allow Milo to travel into the Sealed Realm, this was a further modified version, working inside the Realm, but achieving the same untraceability.

At the same time he spread an Illusion out from the hole as it opened. Like a bounded field it grew to encapsulate the throne room Serpentus sat in. From the Reaper's point of view, nothing had changed. But what he saw and what was happening was quickly changing as everyone else in the throne room only heard him order them to leave.

Kit and Kat were the first to move, the thieves moving wide as Hanza rushed past their target. Cruk and G'nolga were the last to move. The samurai kept the rear as the Dwarf weaponmistress rushed towards the Ork.

As rusty as Serpentus was, he moved quickly to block G'nolga's attack. But Magnus could see the Truth, the Ork could only withstand the blow by drawing on the power of his bonded slaves. That would quickly get taken care of once the capture field was erected.

While G'nolga was keeping him off-balance, the others started to move too.

"Fools, you think you will be able to leave after attacking me here?" Serpentus gloated, but quickly looked surprised as none of the Orks he still saw around reacted. "What's happening?"

"You think we would have attacked you without a plan? Who's the fool here?" G'nolga said through a grin as she unlocked her staff and attempted to trip him.

It wasn't enough, Serpentus managed to keep enough balance to reach and dig his fingers into G'nolga's Aura and start to pull. Thankfully Cruk was fast enough on the draw to create a long slash along the Ork's arm and interrupt the formation of the Aura weapon.

"Careful there, G'nolga, don't let your anger blind you." The Blister Titan warned as he threw the bloodied weapon away.

Magnus quickly caught it and stabbed it in the first corner.

Serpentus sounded like a repeating disc as he looked at the injury in his arm and once more asked what was happening, a Curse of Bleeding on the edges had made sure blood came out, and it kept doing so.

The siblings took full advantage of the Ork's surprise, hiding under Hanza and G'nolga's own attacks to go for a low blow and aimed their cuts towards the Ork's calves. Though it seemed that he saw it coming and managed to reinforce his body enough that he wasn't immobilized. But then second and third blood was drawn.

Two more corners completed, now it was Cruk's turn to push on the attack, even with his previous warning, it was obvious for Magnus that the Blister Titan had plenty of hate of his own.

"I remember you." Serpentus said as he stopped the samurai's blade with one hand and reached with the other to pull on the Aura. A long, slightly curved blade started to take shape.

And it caught even Magnus by surprise that the Samurai allowed Serpentus to try and yank at his Aura to make an opening for G'nolga and Hanza to bloody their own blades on the Reaper.

Serpentus let out a sound of anger and pain. "You think little paper cuts like this will help you defeat me?" He glared at them.

"No." G'nolga said. "But it will certainly help our plan."

The Ork raised an eyebrow as Magnus finished the last corner before launching the last blade towards the ceiling, closing the pyramid. Only he was left inside the Pyramid as the rest were outside of the glimmering walls.

"WHAT?!" The Ork screamed as all color instantly bled off his face, the connections from his Soul severed and all right to leave denied.

"It's easy, we learned that just killing you would be useless." Hanza gloated. "So we just had to make sure you were locked in before we carried the killing blow."

Serpentus glared at the Illusions outside until Magnus dismissed them.

"They left before we started." Magnus explained, allowing the Ork to see him for the first time.

"You…! I've no idea who you are, even her," he pointed to Hanza, "I heard about, even if it was just good for a laugh."

"Hey!" Hanza glared at the Ork.

"I'm no one special." Magnus smiled, earning himself more than one glare at the comment.

"Enough prattling, we kill him no, yes?" Hanza interrupted.

Magnus gave G'nolga a look and grinned. "Should I do the honors and make sure he stays dead?"

The Dwarf woman looked at the cage and the trapped individual, a series of emotions went through her face. She looked at Cruk, the only other person there that had something personal against the tyrant.

The Blister Titan nodded and so did the Dwarf.

Magnus couldn't help but to grin as he pulled on the Shadows, he shook his hands and reached forward. "Let me see if I remember how this goes."

Thumb touching middle and ring finger, index and pinky straight up.

The shadows inside the pyramid stirred, two dark triangles sprung from the ground before the rest of the fox' head slid out, staring at Serpentus.

Middle and ring finger up, thumb down and NOM.

In the blink of an eye the Ork tyrant and half a ton of stone that made the ground disappeared along with the shadow fox head.

"It's done." Magnus announced as he felt the Ork fall into his Darkness Star. Nothing of him would be left. "I would recommend we leave."

"… that was no illusion." Hanza pointedly said as she got into his personal space.

"It wasn't, but I never said I was only an Illusionist." He clarified as he once more opened a portal.

"Let it be," G'nolga warned her, "trust me that you don't want more information about him than you got."

"Yeah? What's the worst that could happen?" More than one in their little group facepalmed at her attitude.

Magnus' lips tugged into a nearly-unhinged grin, his teeth much sharper than before she he leaned over Hanza's shoulder. "Curiosity has a limit because if you look for information you may end up finding it, and you will be forced to pay a price you're not ready for." He warned before pushing her through the portal before following.

"Hey!" She complained as she stumbled through.

"Drop it, Hanza!" G'nolga's tone was much harder, causing her to comply. "And don't worry, you will get your payment as the job was successful."

The mercenary just scoffed as the Wereleopard siblings just chuckled and thanked G'nolga and Cruk before leaving their way. Magnus just assumed their payment had already been previously carried.

Hanza didn't take too much longer to leave after G'nolga handed her the money Magnus had been carrying, that was enough for the woman to grin and head off, muttering about getting a new weapon and armor.

"What did you do with Serpentus?" G'nolga asked once there were only three of them in the clearing. And the Psi-kobolds in his shadow.

"Ate him." He answered.

Cruk just raised an eyebrow as G'nolga looked at him.

"It felt karmic for someone that reaped power from others and fed on it to end up at someone else's jaws." "He answered. "And don't worry, nothing I don't want will survive my insides."

"I trust it wasn't a nice experience?" She asked in a hateful tone.

"Oh, that I can promise, the kind of Truth I put the last of his Body, Mind and Soul through is not a kind one. Forced to face everyone of his actions and accept the Truth that he strayed away from what he one meant to do. Karmic retribution can be nasty once it finally catches up."

There was one fun fact he was leaving out, mostly because it was just a novelty for him. He hadn't needed to Curse Serpentus, the Ork had practically Cursed his own Soul all by himself. His Magic ripped the Auras of his enemies for power, and while he mainly used the wrath, anger and other similar emotions aimed at him, there were also leftovers.

Those remnants slowly accumulated, like filth in a machine. It didn't matter if it was still working, all it took for the machine of his Life to stop once and all came pouring out to swallow him whole.

Truth had done very little else but help it happen faster.

The Dwarf woman and the Blister Titan man seemed to relax, a weight had finally been taken off their shoulders.

"Now what?" She asked.

"I would recommend laying low for a few years. I will update the Illusion left in the Retreat, you will suffer an unexpected death, matters will be helped along and done with quickly before the memory of your imprisonment dies off in their minds." He flung her a small pendant. "That's enchanted to keep people from truly recognizing you unless you act on it. Two or three years and no one will remember you were ever at the retreat or died."

"…You're one scary man."

He just smiled, that was okay with him. The night had been a success and one big, future trouble had been dealt with as sneakily as possible.

The death of Serpentus had already been felt by his descendants, there would be some temporary panic. But he had left enough Truth of his death to make sure they didn't doubt it. Now he would need to wait and watch.

---

Reaching the Dynasty fortress hadn't been neither a fight nor a battle.

Jonathan and Crescens could only watch with the same tired surprise as every converted attacker was completely immobilized and captured. Beings as small as a human and as large as an adult dragon were easily dispatched and put to the side.

The most trouble had been when they came close enough to the towering fortress to be in the reach of its defense systems. But even then the attacks were just bent away from them as if space itself was being twisted. Which actually may be happening, but Milo was not explaining much.

His mood had become more and more somber the closer they came to their target, his usual talkative mood died down and only the alien being behind was left. It was an unnerving experience. But Crescens held a personal interest in what awaited them inside, while Jonathan held an interest in recording what he saw.

"Over there." The Gaoblin priestess led them into the building.

Neither of them said a thing about how her tone revealed her current emotional turmoil.

Once the three of them were inside, their advance accelerated. The fortress' internal defenses presented even less of a threat to them and any fighter went down as quickly as those that they had found before.

The dark hallways were lit in dull red, giving the whole area an almost hellish look. And maybe it felt pretty similar to Crescens as she had once been part of the fortress' leading forces.

It wasn't long before the attacks coming felt less like that, and more like a scared person swatting away at a threat they didn't understand.

Neither of them talked more than it was needed, and it was mainly Crescens guiding them until they reached what appeared to be some kind of throne room. It appeared empty at first, not one fighter nor security system. But they soon saw the only other inhabitant of the room.

They were almost child-like, a silhouette in the same red energy that lit the fortress and every converted being they had come across. They cowered and tried to hide behind the throne, not too successfully as their form cast more light than anything else around.

"Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave…" They screamed when it became obvious they couldn't hide anymore.

"Fortress Kia, that's enough, surrender." Crescens' tone was almost pained as she spoke.

"NO!" That single word created a shock wave out, but it harmlessly stopped before reaching the three of them. "You left me! And now you come back? You are here only to torture me!"

"Yes, I did leave," she slowly started to approach the physical representation of the fortress' leading intelligence after getting Milo's nod, "but I didn't come back to torture you."

Jonathan and Milo just watched as she slowly knelt down by Kia's side.

The older man moved close to Milo and asked in a low voice, "Will it be okay?"

The younger one took a moment to react, a soft nod. "Yes… it won't be a quick or clean thing. But I'm making sure things go well between them. Fortress Kia's very old and very traumatized, their child-like body is not just a choice, it very much represents how mature their mind is."

"Wait… you are-"

"Yes, I'm making sure things Heal properly." Milo said, a soft smile on his lips. "I'm helping things move along, some Nurture goes a long way when one of them is so young in Mind. Of course it will take time, I would recommend getting used to the sight of the fortress because we'll be staying for a bit before we get to move back to the Earth Realm. Not just for those two, but also to retrieve all of the converted forces not currently around."

Milo didn't miss the turmoil that came up in Jonathan's mind the moment he mentioned their return to the Earth Realm, and it wasn't just because little could hide their thoughts from him when he was paying attention. But the older man's face hid little of his internal thoughts.

"I can tell that you're worried, but they are family, and if there's something I've learned from my own, it is that you can never say no to returning family." Milo spoke with an honest, and a tiny bit of his Psychic powers, that reached the older man.

"… you are right." Jonathan said after letting out a soft sigh, running his fingers through his blonde hair. "Quite paradoxical, I can't wait and at the same time I don't want it to come."

"From my understanding, that's a very common human condition, the thrill and fear of the unknown has always pushed your race forward while trying to keep itself safe from the dangers outside." Milo gave him a little shrug.

As much as Milo could peer into the future, his existence made said information mostly unusable. Beings like his brother and himself scrambled the threads of Fate by existing. So it was a funny thing, he was strong enough that the future was as nebulous as for a common mortal, he just had more tools to approach it.

But the future was to come and their present was right there, so maybe taking care of the current problems was the best. The future would come, no need to rush it.

 

[shypunk]

thanks for the chapter and for writing.

 

[Melakias]

Venturing the Worlds – 93

Magnus pushed Lydia's flaming kick away, he ignored the flames licking at him as he simultaneously blocked Moisha's shocking punch, and did so with the same hand. Romeo's attack was stopped perfectly still with the sole of his foot, and with a small push sent the three flying back.

"Again, and now make it worth my attention." He barked out.

A hint of anger flashed through Lydia's face, wanting to bark back at him, but quickly steeled herself as shared her plan with her two partners. This was done wordlessly as Romeo had improved his psychic abilities enough to create a mental connection between the three of them.

It had taken work and some help from Orange, but his powers had developed well into something that was usable during battle, to the point their synchronization during the fight made them a single fighter in three places.

And as one fighter they moved.

Magnus watched patiently, calmly observing as the ambient Magic started to stir with their actions. Small currents formed and Magic started to get filtered, parting into the three elements the Team used. He could only admire how they had made it work.

Fire and Ice may be considered opposite, but they both worked in a similar manner. One added energy, the other pushed it away. Under normal circumstances magic created and destroyed that energy to make matters simpler. But the three of them had learned how to skip that step in the magic and instead use that movement of energy.

As Romeo pushed away the energy to lower the temperature of his Magic, Lydia happily took it in, feeding her own. And in the middle Moisha was both feeding, feeding on, the exchange of energy to empower herself.

And as the song of Magic reached a crescendo, the three of them moved. Three sources of Magic moving as one, their natures feeding each other and growing even more.

The ground and very air around them started to freeze, scorch and get zapped, the resulting noise being almost deafening. Enough damage that Magnus had to admit it would even damage his body. The very threat caused him to grin and prepare to take the attack.

He took a page from their book and called on his own Elements. The flesh of his arms shifted away. From the tip of the fingers to his elbows it flowed away, revealing a pair of almost undetermined limbs made from Light and Darkness.

While they didn't feed each other in the same way, Darkness and Light propped each other up, the former was deeper when Light shone somewhere else, and the latter stood out more when there was Darkness. But he went for something a bit simpler.

Light moved behind Darkness and shone brightly, casting out a massive hand made of Shadow to catch the mixed Elemental attack.

The noise suddenly changed, from a chainsaw cutting live wires that had caught on fire during a snowstorm, to the muffled scream of the silent damned. It only lasted for a few moments, but once the three of them pulled back, the extent of their exhaustion was clear.

While Moisha and Romeo were kneeling, Lydia had managed to remain standing. But even then the three were panting heavily and it was only their boosted regeneration that had returned them enough stamina to not just pass out.

"Nothing? Really?!" Moisha cried out.

"Actually, that was quite more damaging than it looks." Magnus cleared up. "It just doesn't show on the physical side." And it was True, just one layer under his physical body the signs of their attack would have been quite visible all the way up to his wrist.

"So feel proud of your improvement." He said. "And with that, and the fact that we will be arriving pretty soon, I've what you could call a sort-of graduation into the level of Weaponmaster."

"New stuff!" Moisha cheered as Romeo moved to catch her when her knees nearly gave up.

"Sort-of," Magnus said cheekily, "but more of a project I've been working on for the three of you for a while. But first you three should freshen up and recover, your new threads ain't going nowhere."

The three of them nodded and headed off to hit the showers, sipping on healing potions on the way there. They took their time, but soon they found themselves back in Magnus' workshops, where the man waited for them by a set of very conspicuous covered displays.

"Now, I could very well get sappy here, but I don't think either of us are much into that stuff." Magnus said. "So with little more preparation, here are your new suits."

The three curtains dissolved as if they hadn't been there before, most likely a fact given the man, and revealed three, color-coordinated…

"Ninja outfits?" Lydia asked, dryly.

Magnus shrugged. "Not really, I mean, they look this way, but that's because I based them on the usual Sheikah attire." He pulled on his own garments. "The whole black and color thing is mostly their stand-by mode, they can mimic practically any clothing, even the coloring is optional."

He allowed them to pick their respective equipment as he explained their properties. Things like increased defense, a buff to their respective Element, superior stealth capabilities and dozens of other tiny things.

"Is there a reason why the material feels weird on the colored parts?" Romeo asked.

"Good catch, it's because they were made with the leather sourced from the King Gleeok, the same one that was used for your weapons." He answered. "But that's not all, I also used a good amount of the leather recovered from the Basilisk."

"Basilisk?" Lydia asked.

"Oh, right, I never told you about it. Back in the Wizard World there was an event a couple years before our arrival where they killed an ancient, as in over a thousand years old or so, magical snake under the magic school and they kinda just left the body there."

"...there's so much wrong about that sentence." She said, face palming.

"Yup, it was a trove of materials, the skin is naturally highly resistant to magic. But there were ways to work and enchant it, so I did for your clothes, I also tapped sideways with a bit of a Lie to pull the camouflage abilities of a few other magical reptiles, that's where the transformation abilities come from."

The three of them changed behind a curtain as he explained, taking no more than a few minutes as the clothes were made to be worn by them.

"That's not all, the snake also had a fang, big enough for three blades." Magnus explained as Romeo was the first one to reach for his waist, retrieving a curved dagger with a green pommel. "Those blades are extremely dangerous, but after a week they will have bonded with you, providing you with an immunity to their poison and any other weaker than its own. It should also make it impossible for anyone else to use them. Actually, anyone who tries will find things going quite badly for them."

"…So this is it?" Lydia asked after some thoughtful moment.

"If you're talking about getting back to your World, I would say it's a big chance to settle your issues with it." Magnus answered. "You'll be free to stay if you want, or you can still come with us."

The three just exchanged a look before nodding in silence. Magnus could only wonder if his sister was having similar problems with her companion.

---

Frank West aimed and shot zombie after zombie, the camera captured the shambling corpses… or well, they weren't exactly undead. No, it was better to call them mindless, aggressive bodies, closer to animals rather than common undead.

He put the camera down, letting it hang from his neck as he pulled the last baseball bat her had left from his last scavenging in the sports section of the Willamette Mall. The weapon was looking more than a bit up, but if he remembered well, there should be some chairs in the way towards the roof access if it broke.

He got ready to swing the bat towards the shambling body before a small glint in the corner of his vision made him stop.

Frank had covered natural disasters, marches that had turned violent and even wars -as he liked to remind people-, and through all of them, it had been his vision and reflexes that had kept him ahead of danger and safe enough to live another day.

And it was those two facts that made him notice something moving around very quickly. Fast enough that he could only tell it was metallic and oddly shaped.

Frank kept his bat up as he kept seeing the flashes moving between the shambling bodies, never coming too close, but moving in such erratic manner that he couldn't make sense of what it was doing. Of course it wasn't as troubling as when he stopped seeing it.

There was something very weird happening, he couldn't put his finger on it. But if he had to say, it had started earlier in the day. He was pretty sure there were less zombies than usual. And now the zombies around seemed to be slowing down, as if they were stuck in place, which made it very easy to notice when someone appeared in his field of view, walking between the zombies as if they weren't there.

He would guess she wasn't even sixteen, or maybe she was just small. He could tell she was most likely Japanese, he had traveled enough to notice the tiny details. Said old experience made him bring his camera up and take a few pictures, because there was something entrancing about the girl. She just looked completely uncaring about the threat, dancing between the zombies, never coming close enough to any of their grasping hands.

"Hey, it's dangerous here." He called out after putting his camera down.

The girl turned to him and Frank got the sensation that she already knew he was there. She once more moved between the bodies to his side, and none managed to reach her even once.

"Frank West, right?" She asked in perfect English. It surprised him that she had absolutely no accent.

"Yes, who are you? And what do you want?" He asked.

"I'm Alice and I was asked to look for you, we're rounding all survivors and dealing with this whole mess." The teenage girl said.

Frank raised an eyebrow as he looked around. "While that's a nice thought, I would say we still have a problem around here."

She followed him looking around, and said with a mischievous smile on her lips. "Oh, these?" The question sounded very much like she didn't find them to be a problem. And why did he believe that to be true?

There was still something very weird, and it took him a moment to realize what it was, there was hardly any shuffling. It had become an almost constant background noise, the sound of feet getting dragged over the dirty floor, stumbling bodies and sometimes things breaking. But there was none of that.

"Don't worry about them, this should take care of all of them." The girl's voice made him refocus on her and notice the strange object on her hand.

It looked like a bladeless knife handle, but a closer inspection showed there was a very thin wire coming out of it. Actually now that he looked, there were wires everywhere in the area. A cold sensation ran down his back as he hadn't noticed them until then, was it a trick of the light?

"What do you-" He didn't finish the question as the girl gave the handle a little tug and the wet, snapping noise of dozens of necks.

It was a grotesque sight as suddenly every zombie in the area went stiff and was promptly decapitated, the wires that crisscrossed the whole area had shifted just enough. And then came the sound of dozens of bodies hitting the ground as dead, dead weight.

Words died in his mouth as he looked at Alice, suddenly the girl didn't look so much like just a normal teenage girl. Her eyes held a dangerous glint, they made Frank feel like a tiny bug in front of a predator.

He tightened his grip on his bat as a cutting sound was followed by the disappearance of all wires in the area and the appearance of a wicked-looking blade connected to the previously blade-less handle.

"...how?" He managed to squeeze out.

He had confronted some crazy people in the last day or so, but something told Frank that the young woman in front of him was several times more dangerous than any of the psychos.

"I inherited the title of Spider, I was a natural at it." She explained and started to walk, easily dodging the piled bodies.

Frank took a moment before he rushed after her. "Wait, wait, title of what? Natural at what?" He asked once he got to walk by her side.

"Assassination," she replied and smiled, thankfully it didn't have that dangerous edge, just felt very sad, "oh, don't worry, I was given an escape from that life. It's just that the skills I built up turned out to still be useful."

He couldn't help but to look around, and shoot a few more pictures. As grotesque as it was, he couldn't deny that she was good at killing if she could take out these many targets. He ignored the thought of how easily those wires could have wrapped around his neck too.

"So who are we looking for?" He asked.

"She's a friend… well, a friend of a friend more like." The girl explained. "I… it's not like I don't get along with her. But I still don't feel like I am any more than acquaintances."

"Does she have a name?"

"Claire."

"And a title?" He asked.

"Yes, but she's no assassin." Alice answered. "Actually, I think she has a few, but I only heard one of them, Abyss Prison."

"What is she then?" Frank asked as they left the food court and moved towards the roof access. He didn't miss how the area was filled with more corpses. Though they didn't appear to have been fully decapitated, instead it looked like they had their necks broken in different ways.

"In her own words, Unique." She answered, and before he could react, she brought her hand up, grabbing the face of another girl that hadn't been there a moment before.

It took him a moment to realize that she hadn't come out of thin air, and instead had been brought to a sudden stop.

Alice just sighed. "Mr. West, this is my friend Megumi, Megumi, behave." Her tone sounded tired, but accepting about the situation.

Frank didn't judge, even as the girl seemed to slip around Alice's hand and wrap herself around the other teen.

"Boo, he's old and boring." Megumi said. "Akari and the others finished their part, all zombies were taken out and the survivors rounded up. Though there were a few troublesome individuals still around, but Ran was going to take care of them… oh! There she goes!"

Both Alice and Frank turned to follow the girl's pointing finger. Without all the shambling zombies, it reminded him that he was in a massive mall, and through a massive window he could see the leisure park the mall existed around.

Said park was usually teeming with zombies and a constant problem with a number of escaped convicts from the near prison. Frank really wondered where they had gotten the armed jeep. But at the end of the day, it didn't matter much how they got it, just that they had it.

Without any zombies around, it was easy to see them coming. And said group of armed convicts was speeding towards a young girl, looking barely older than Alice or Megumi.

A snort made him turn to the latter girl. "Don't fret, Ran's much tougher than she looks." The girl said and pointed once more.

He turned once more and lifted his camera, zooming in to look at the situation and shoot a few pictures. The girl was right, the other girl, Ran, didn't look surprised or fearful at all at the situation, even when there were three men accelerating towards her.

"What you have to understand," Alice's voice didn't break his concentration as he kept shooting the camera, "is that none of us is normal. Megumi's skin creates a particular oil that makes her extremely slippery and her nerves can react many times faster than a normal human. My brain can take massive amounts of information and process it in the time it takes most people to understand something's happening, and Ran…"

The girl outside extended her hand and Frank caught in the camera how something in her hand extended into an over two-meters long trident. He could only keep taking the pictures as the jeep came closer and closer.

If his camera couldn't shoot at high speed he would have missed, a simple blink of an eye and it would have been over. But the camera caught every frame of it.

Ran thrust the trident forward, piercing the jeep's engine block and heaving the whole vehicle, convicts and all, up into the air. It felt almost impossible, if he had not seen it with his own eyes. The car was held in the air like a fake prop. And the small thing of a girl swung it around, flinging the convicts off the vehicle before smashing them down with said vehicle.

If Frank hadn't seen the men gun down innocents that tried to escape through the park he may have felt more troubled. Instead he shook his head and turned to Alice for an explanation.

"Ran's muscles are abnormally strong, a mutation in her myostatin has led to her muscle fibers, tendons and bones to be dozens of times stronger than normal."

Frank felt like he remembered having read something similar in the news just a year before. He looked at the girl that had flung the wrecked vehicle off her weapon like it was a toy she had done playing with. She had turned and gave them a wave; he quickly caught her on camera.

It was just her face, barely any corpses could be seen in the back of the picture, made him wonder if anyone would believe him if he told them that the same girl had manhandled a vehicle single handedly.

Frank took another picture as the girl walked inside and spoke with the two others, he quickly put the camera down and followed the three of them and wondered, what was this Claire like?

---

The mall's roof felt oddly silent and it took Frank a moment to realize it was the lack of growls coming from the distance. He took a moment after the elevator door opened to wander over to the edge and look over.

The streets were still in complete chaos, but there were no shambling zombies, only still bodies laying on the ground. He tried to sharpen his gaze, but quickly ended pulling his camera up and using it to zoom on the bodies.

From closer it became obvious that the bodies hadn't been brought down by normal weapons. There were literal chunks missing from the bodies, the result of very high caliber weapons, usually only seen as emplacements. As he had seen in more than one war.

He turned away when he heard one of the girls mention Claire.

Said young woman wasn't what he expected, he would have honestly have described her as goth. Pale skin, dark hair, green tattoos and metal fan getup. But he could instantly tell that she wasn't a normal person.

By reflex he lifted the camera to take a picture. But instead of getting a picture, all the camera caught was a black void of a silhouette. He tried a few times, every time it seemed to get the same result. The only difference was that he was almost sure the black was moving around; as hard as it was to describe how.

"It won't work." A voice made him turn, finding another young woman. "Akari, nice to meet you." She offered her hand.

Frank shook it, surprised by how strong her grip was. But after seeing Ran swing a whole jeep around…

"What do you mean?" He asked as he shook her hand.

"Claire prefers her privacy," she said before laughing and waving it off, "I'm joking. But the real explanation would be too long, just has to do with light and how it bends around her, you would have better luck sketching her." She said and pointed. "Plus she's about to start the show."

He raised an eyebrow and turned to look, it seemed that someone had brought the corpse of Dr. Russel Barnaby.

"What are you going to do?" Jessie McCarney, one of the two DHS agents there, asked.

"Just administering some Karma." Claire said.

"He's dead, it's not like that can be changed." Jessie said.

"You would be surprised. But I'm not my brother, he would have been able to deal with this whole mess much easier." Claire said, a small sigh escaping her lips. "That's why I'm doing this."

As she spoke, she raised a hand, causing the air to tremble before a mass of green, gaseous substance to coalesce above it. Frank tried to shoot it with his camera, but different from what he got from Claire, the image in the digital screen appeared to be full of static.

"What the hell is that?!" Brad, the other DHS agent, exclaimed.

"Ectoplasm, about a week's worth of production." Claire explained. And with that, she flung it towards the corpse.

At first nothing happened, not that it stopped Frank from shooting the scene multiple times per second. Then came the tremors, the spasms and the screams of surprise from the two DHS agents as the body contorted unnaturally.

Frank noticed it first as the digital camera's feed started to get fed with static, forcing him to pull it down as the see-through. The good ol', dead, doctor looked around confused.

"...wait, ectoplasm… is this Ghostbusters now?" Frank asked and Akira just laughed.

She looked to be about to explain it, but before she could speak, the air on the mall's roof became cold and asphyxiating. The sunlight shining down seemed to be choked down by the growing shadows.

"Dr. Russel Barnaby, due to acts carried on life, it's in the name of my uncle that I declare you guilty." Even if her voice was still as calm as ever, there was a weight that was undeniable. And Frank was sure he was still missing part of what was happening.

The ghost of the doctor seemed to be frozen under her gaze, causing Claire to let out another sigh.

"This is why I prefer to not do this." She snapped her fingers and her shadow stretched out, going from slightly dark to a complete pitch black. It looked as if space itself had been removed and nothing was left behind.

Interestingly, his camera managed to catch the sight of said black void as a strange and monstrous figure rose from it. It was a mix of femme fatale and mad scientist. A skin as pale as chalk, hunched over, wearing a labcoat, arm covered in gadgets straight from a horror story and a single red and black horn coming off her forehead. Plus a manic grin and almost lost gaze, only focusing when Claire spoke.

"Research Installation." Claire said, getting the monstrous woman to look at her.

"Yes Princess?"

Frank just gave the young woman by his side a side look, causing her to giggle and wave it off.

"Take him and see about fixing the damn problem, I will get you the samples you need." Frank was pretty sure Claire's tone denoted tiredness. But it sounded so flat it was hard to tell.

The mania, horny woman just grinned before grabbing the ghost and dragged him back into the dark depths of Claire's shadow. Even as the doctor looked like he wanted nothing about it. But no matter how much he fought, it seemed that he was outdone easily.

"That should do it, as much as I prefer to keep from asking Installation and the rest, her skills are still the real deal." Claire explained, little.

Honestly, as much as Frank felt that any control on the situation had been completely lost, he couldn't deny that for some reason, it felt as if everything would be better now.

 

[shypunk]

thanks for the chapter and for writing.

 

[Melakias]

Venturing the Worlds – 94

Magnus looked around the dark side of the Moon. For such an advanced World, the local, natural satellite had a surprising lack of installations. He knew some people had small things here and there, Gina for example had a few pods; one of them containing certain troublesome Djinni for example. But overall, mostly just rocks and dust.

It wasn't like he was going to start building on the Moon, he had managed to develop those pocket realms that provided him all the space he would need. Right now he was just waiting for his brother to return.

And it was just in time for Brittany to give birth, Magnus wondered how much it was his brother timing things and how much just chance.

Because it was most likely just the latter, he retrieved a golden pocket watch from his Inventory. The piece was the curious result of a little experiment of his in the last few months. Instead of telling time, the clock effectively counted down towards an event. The only problem is that the event couldn't be willingly set, and instead worked along the unconscious desire and the effects of Fate, along with a tiny bit of oracular magic.

So it was a bit useless for most people. Magnus could use it more effectively mostly because he Lied to the watch and could set it to count down to whatever he wanted. Of course, given his nature, any action he took recalculated the time, and that could take some time. Fun how that worked.

Time ticked down until it hit zero, and Space buckled. To his senses, multiple things happened at the same time. The sight of the stars bent and shifted, as if they had been painted on literal fabric and someone pulled it from behind. Time ached as two different speeds were forced to match locally. Magic was also being affected on a large scale, a pinprick of magic pierced through Space before it unfolded and opened a path for the massive, dark fortress to come through.

And invisible to practically everyone else, he saw the Truth and Lie battle to make up for the forced changes on Space.

The tunnel slowly closed behind it, the process once more shifting the Light coming from the stars. He wondered if the space anomaly would be enough to be a problem on Earth. He was pretty sure it shouldn't, but he had warned the people in charge about the arrival just in case. No need to start trouble over miscommunication.

It was quite an imposing construction. Roughly a cube of about a square kilometer, made from some dark, stone-like material. There was little doubt that it was a weapon of war, a long, almost forgotten war.

"Good to see you again, Magnus." Milo's voice echoed in his head.

"Good to have you back, and just in time, what took you so long?" He asked.

"Kia's records had information about a few other exiles wandering the Silent Realm, we picked up a few more people."

Magnus smiled. "I would bet it's more like you picked a few more people, how many planets will dad have to make?"

A sense of mirth came through instead of a laugh. "One, maybe two. I may have better luck with a pocket realm for some of them, though they may just end up living along with the others in Yuki." His brother answered.

"Can I come in now?"

"I'm not the one you have to ask for permission." Milo's tone was mirthful.

He laughed softly. "So, who do I've to ask permission to come aboard?"

"Hello? Hello! I apologize for this, but Milo told me to connect on this frequency." A more childish voice came through one of the public channels in the System.

"Ah, you must be Fortress Kia. A pleasure talking with you, may I come aboard to meet properly?" He asked.

"Oh! It's actually Battlestation Kia, not Fortress… but I think that in some languages that may not make much difference… You can just call me Kia as I'm the intelligence guiding the Battlestation, even if the whole ship uses both for designation."

Magnus couldn't help but to chuckle. "Good to know, but it seems you've picked up some of my brother's verbosity, and I don't mind hearing more, but I asked a question."

"Oh! Yes, of course, I'm sorry, of course you can come in."

It only took Magnus a step to Blink between his spot and the entrance that opened on one of the walls. The visage of the Moon was replaced by black metal and red-light corridors. And waiting for him was a kid-shaped construct of blue energy.

"Welcome! I'm Kia." They say cheerfully.

"Nice to meet you, Kia, as you know I'm Magnus."

"Yes! You are not entirely what I expected from what your brother told me. But that's okay!"

Magnus followed Kia as they started to walk. "Oh, that must be because I'm a copy and I've differed from the original in the over a year since I was created." He mused. "You may meet him soon since he should be arriving shortly."

That made Magnus think about the meaning of his original's arrival. Even after months, he was still failing to get a good way to deal with the damned thing just outside of Time and Space.

It wasn't like he didn't have ideas, some that he was even pretty sure were assured to work. But… but, the most assured to work would need him to sacrifice himself. It was the simple fact that their father had made them the ultimate parasites, to the point that anything that tried to parasitize any of them would find the roles getting switched.

Given how the Umbra worked as a parasite when giving power, all he had to do was jump straight into the monster's maw. That would, theoretically, allow him to take over the whole monster.

And there came the problem, it didn't exactly take out the monster, he just replaced it, forcing Magnus to be the being. At best he was capable of dragging the thing into himself. But he wasn't sure, his nature made the atemporal existence of the being clash with his own temporal weight and size.

I talked about some light stuff with Kia as we walked, they were quite childish, and even if they were very, very old, their maturity hadn't reached the level of an adult. It was a curious thought to ponder about, how much time would it take them to mature? Would they ever even do it?

The two soon reached a room that was slightly different from the rest of black and red. This room was much more colorful, the black had been replaced by a softer gray, the harsh reds were replaced by yellows, blues and greens. The combination of color gave the room a much welcoming atmosphere.

"Milo." He smiled as he saw his brother, waiting for him along with a few other people.

"Magnus." His brother replied and gestured to the other two with him. "You already knew Jonathan, even if he was not in the best mental situation, or soul." The older blond man chuckled. "And this is Crescens." The Gaoblin priestess nodded

"Then it's a pleasure to meet you, I'm sure your brother already presented me well enough in your time together." Magnus said.

"You and your brother's actions have given me a second chance at life, literally." Jonathan said. "I don't know how I will ever thank you enough for it."

"I'm sure Milo already said it, we like to meddle." Magnus said, causing the older man to smile knowingly.

"I've to extend my gratitude too, not just for what your brother's arrival meant for me, but also for my people." Crescens said. "And before you say anything, I know you asked your brother to go, so you deserve part of my gratitude too."

"I wasn't going to say anything." He teased her, making his brother snort. "Except that I'm glad to see you're all doing well. Especially you, Jonathan, your great grandchild will be born in just a few days. Don't worry, I already talked with the necessary people for your return from unlife."

The man nodded, seemingly wordless about it.

Magnus then turned to Milo and Kia. "How many species and individuals will need deprocessing?"

"Why do you ask?" Milo asked.

"Mostly to know if I will have to prepare some new pocket realms to house them and provide food, though I doubt the latter will be much problem with you around." He said with a grin. "Outside of that, if you will need help with that. Once we've solved that I would be taking Jonathan back to Earth."

His brother nodded and started planning things. It quickly became obvious they may have to take things with care as many would most likely not react well when freed and the presence of the two of them may be needed to keep things in control.

"Having second thoughts?" Magnus asked, easily reading Jonathan's face.

It had been a few hours, but tiredness was nothing when Milo was around. Not that the older blond man didn't know a trick or two to refresh his body and mind.

"Yes, but I can't turn back now."

Magnus nodded and gestured to the door, but as the older man still had a bit of a doubt, he reached for the bell himself. "No escaping now, I don't want to have to hunt you down."

Jonathan gave him a look, but didn't get to say anything before the door opened and Theodore, Gina's father and Jonathan's son, looked out.

"Magnus, good to see you, what brings… you… by…"

"Ah, hi son." Jonathan so eloquently said.

Before Theodore could say anything, or react in way, Magnus snapped his fingers between them, breaking that spell. "Now, I'm sure you have many questions, but I think they are better answered inside. And yes, it's safe, you can trust me."

He took a moment before nodding and inviting them to pass. Julia was much faster to react to the man, but Magnus was ready to stop her sword. The surprise of him acting was enough to convince her it was safe before the four of them sat down to talk.

"Now, to explain how this came to be," Magnus took the lead in the talk, "first is how, and the answer is my brother."

"Milo?" Julia asked.

He nodded. "While Milo's the antithesis to Undead and similar beings, he's not restricted to just releasing them to whichever cycle will take their Souls. He can bring them back, providing them with a renewed spark of Life."

"Somehow I doubt that was the end of it. Especially as I've not seen your brother in the last few months." Theodore guessed.

"That's right, if he had just done as I said, it would only have given the Lich his life back. But I found a little chance to change things." He gave Jonathan a look, the man retrieving the diary now bonded to his Soul and Mind.

"That book..." Theodore recognized it.

"Exactly," Magnus continued, "Milo required a, let's say, sample of the old Jonathan to fix the changes. Thankfully one existed, it just took some time to track it down and find a way to reach it."

"If I remember right, the last time I saw that book was before one of your many travels through the Realms." Theodore said, finally addressing his father.

"That's correct, I unfortunately forgot to grab it when I had to do a rushed exit." The older man said.

"You mean you had to escape from the locals?" His son said with a knowing smile, getting a similar one in return.

"Thankfully the nature of said Realm managed to keep the book in good condition, and inside an imprint complete and pure enough that Milo could use it." Magnus resumed the explanation.

"But wouldn't that mean he's back to then?" Julia prompted.

"No." Jonathan answered for Magnus. "I remember everything that has happened in my life, with extreme clarity, even those moments that happened while I was a Lich after the thwarted Essence Inversion spell. Milo's act wasn't just replacing, he corrected the damage the transformation forced on me."

"Why not erase it? He definitely has that kind of power." Theodore said, sounding quite angry.

"Because my brother's, and honestly most of my family too, opinion is mind control and memory erasure is a big No. We have a few tangential things we'll do and one or two exceptions, I won't deny that. But effectively erasing about a decade or two of memories is out of the question. All memories have worth, in Jonathan's case, those years have been made distant, disconnected. They are still completely available, but are now closer to watching a full immersion movie."

"Still-"

"That's enough, son. I'm okay with it, after so many years, I can't not take the existence of those memories as anything but a penance I've accepted to carry. It's not like I've not also learned plenty in my time, especially in very useful ways to deal with Undead." The older man said, a dangerous edge on his voice.

Magnus smiled. "Well, I think I will retire for now." He said as he stood up. "Oh!" He quickly added, "with Milo back, please message us when Brittany goes into labor, he will more than happily help."

Julia and Theodore thanked him and Jonathan gave him a nod.

He wished them a good day and departed. After all, his original had arrived.

---

Reality buckled and the Long Fortune entered the Jade Realm. The ship slid into Reality much easier than it's first time, appearing above where the Psi-Snail and Yuki were currently staying.

Magnus, the local one, looking up to the ship, a sense of trepidation filling him like it had never before. Even from a distance he could feel his original just like how he could feel his brother not too far off.

He wondered if his original feeling was the same as he hadn't reached out for him yet. The silence was troubling, but as he watched the ship land he knew he would not have to wait for long.

Magnus felt his nervousness increase by the second, and all he could do was watch as the Long Fortune landed just in front of him.

The moment stretched into an eternity, and even with Milo, Ibis and the rest of the Psi-kobold colony in the back of his mind, he couldn't help but feel like he should be fidgeting.

Of course, it wasn't as if his body would show those feelings. Just like his original and their siblings, their bodies had practically no autonomous reaction; the only autonomous reactions were linked to their adaptation to new environments. So even if he felt nervous, his hands didn't grow clammy, nor his body sweated more, nor tapped the ground or any other similar reaction.

Instead all he did was wait patiently as one of the side-entrances of the ship opened and his original walked out, soon followed by the rest of his crew.

It was the matter of an instant that they spent measuring each other, and both quickly realized something. The original was bigger. Of course it wasn't a physical thing, he was practically a xerox copy as he hadn't seen the need to change his looks. But there was a strange qualitative difference between them. The original's Soul was richer, deeper, complex, more of everything.

In hindsight it was quite obvious. The original had been traveling across Worlds, and that tended to be quite the enriching experience for a Soul. To add to that, there were Perks the original had acquired that he had not.

The copy decided to take the last step and offered his hand towards the original. Both shared an identical smile before their hands made contact. And then contact deepened.

As much as their Souls had grown into different directions, they were still original the same, and that allowed them to synchronize, becoming a single being again. It wouldn't be permanent, they both understood themselves enough to not merge completely.

And just like how water flows downhill or air tries to equalize pressure, some of what had made the Traveler more flowed into the Teacher.

It reinforced, filled and complemented the copy, it drew him up. It didn't make them equal, but it wasn't needed, they were two different individuals and both understood it. The copy also felt a number of Perks the original had acquired be replicated in him, and so did the few that he had acquired be reflected on the original. Knowledge, experiences and similar memories were shared too.

"Good to have you here." He said towards his original.

"I'm glad to see that you managed to build a life here." The original replied.

It wasn't just words that were exchanges, memories and meanings packed into each word in their conversation.

"I would say I'm still working on it, but slowly making sure the Reality doesn't crash under a hungry being's interests and plans."

"How's that going?" The original asked.

"Unfortunately only bad ideas." Magnus said, sharing the ideas of the plans he felt were the closest to achieve his goal. "Hopefully a second set of eyes will allow us a better result."

"Then I hopefully will be able to help with that."

"That's the idea, because I don't want to shoot myself into the problem to take over it from the inside." He grumbled.

They slowly let go of their hands and their appreciation of time returned to normal as the rest of the crew came to a stop by the original. Their conversation had gone unnoticed by everyone but Milo, their brother was hard to trick in the matters of telepathic conversations.

There were plenty of greetings shared back and forth, even the Psi-Snail chimed in.

For as nervous as Magnus, both of them, had been about the meeting, things had gone better than expected. Now they just had to find a problem for the big monster and not collapse reality in itself.

---

Link rode Epona towards Central Hyrule.

The stop at the Dueling Peaks hadn't taken more than half an hour, and that had mostly been getting up the tower. The rest had been almost too easy, the Cryo Rune had made crossing the river as easy as it had been getting down from the tower thanks to his glider.

His current horse had shown to be an extremely intelligent mare. She had kept herself safe while he was away and came to his call instantly. Link was pretty sure the mare would have little to no problem taking out one or two Bokos by herself, he had noticed some Malice residue on her hooves during one of the breaks they had taken.

He made a mental note to visit the Gorons to see if they had some better horseshoes to equip her with, or maybe check in one of the many stables; he didn't remember if they offered similar services. But given the areas he was most likely going to be traveling to, he would do well in making sure Epona was comfortable.

Maybe he would check with some of the merchant union that had formed in Hyrule. He hadn't noticed until he had talked with Symin about it later, but apparently Magnus had gotten some of the traveling merchants the idea of teaming up. It had apparently been very effective.

It wasn't like individual traveling merchants had disappeared, in fact, he saw a small team of two walking just ahead of him.

The pair Hylian traders were walking placidly to each side of their pack horse, said animal was loaded up with an almost comical amount of stuff. From his position, Link could tell that the whole thing appeared to be folded up, most likely for easy deployment once they got to their destination.

One of them turned when Link was close enough. His presence seemed to surprise the man who quickly warned their partner. Link watched as they moved off the road and slowed down to wait for him.

"Greetings traveler." The man that hadn't noticed him at first greeted him.

Link nodded as he hopped off Epona to let her rest as he gave the man a look. The man's voice was quite soft for his ruggish looks.

"Oh, not one of many words?" The man asked and shrugged. "That's okay, most merchants speak with rupees." He laughed at his own joke as his partner finished unfolding the stand.

As Link had expected, the whole box seemed to expand into a stand, allowing their horse to graze as they started to offer him varied items. There was nothing truly surprising, it seemed they were mostly peddling the standard items for the travelers, things like rations, water bags, fire starters, etc…

The most interesting thing was a few fire-less torches. He hadn't seen those before, but he could tell they had been made with engraved rubies at the end of wood and metal sticks. He bought a couple to have.

"May I ask where you're going, stranger?" The merchant prompted after the money was exchanged for goods.

Link just gestured towards the Zora Domain, seemingly that was enough for the man.

"Then you better buy yourself some rain-proof gear, rumors have it that the Divine Beast Vah Ruta awoke recently and has been causing the whole area to be under a constant downpour."

Link nodded, Purah had mentioned that the Divine Beasts could start acting up as they had been taken over by Malice.

He thanked the two men for the information.

But before they could part ways, and even as the two men had started to put their stuff back into storage, the man had turned to him.

"Ah! Before I forget, there's been a lot of cases of highwaymen disguising themselves as normal people lately, I would be careful if I were you, especially with such a lovely horse." The man's words caused Epona to snort.

Link smiled and thanked him again, but he was pretty sure that anyone trying to take Epona would find themselves kicked or stomped on.

He still considered the warning as Epona started to lazily trot away from the pair of sellers, it meant it wouldn't just be monsters he would be needing to be wary of. It surprised him a bit that he hadn't heard much about it before, but he had practically done a straight line towards Kakariko Village after waking up and only talked with a few people.

In addition to that, the Necluda Region was definitely safer as the constant patrols kept even the monsters' numbers low, thieves and highwaymen would most likely steer away from the region too.

And as they moved North through Central Hyrule, Link couldn't help but to start to hum a tune.

 

[shypunk]

thanks for the chapter and for writing.

 

[Melakias]

Venturing the Worlds – 95

The sight of the Undercity was familiar and so alien at the same time for the three of them. The rocky ceiling and artificial lights had never felt so oppressive. The sea of buildings similarly had a foreign feeling.

They had been born and lived the first years of their lives in one of the many alleys and nooks. But they didn't belong to them anymore.

Lydia observed the flowing Wererats going on with their lives and felt a small amount of pity for them. Most lived in squalor, stealing from each other just to survive another day, and the system in place to provide them with proper jobs ran on pure nepotism. Most were lucky if they even got a job that wouldn't do its best to try to kill them.

Lydia pushed all those thoughts away as her eyes stopped at their current target, built at the center of the Undercity, acting not only as pillar to the ceiling, but also as focus to a huge number of spells that kept the city existing and empowered those few at the top.

"We're, like, totally going to end up fighting those two before we're done, no?" Moisha asked.

"Unfortunately, while I would love to kick their asses ourselves, as good as we have become, those two are monsters on a different level." Lydia answered patiently.

Thankfully Magnus had provided them with a small trinket capable of keeping them hidden from all observation until they reached their target. Meaning they didn't have to talk in whispers or sign language.

"That's okay, knowing that we set them up to get destroyed." Romeo said and hummed, shrugging lightly with his shoulders.

"Yup." She said curtly. "Those two have not skipped on making a lot of enemies, and with the oldest Digger back, they will most likely want to get their pound of flesh."

The two of them nodded knowingly to her. The old rat had lived a long life, and accrued a lot of enemies during that time, apparently his pride had led him to gloat to more than one person about his deeds and that knowledge sooner or later had gotten to the affected parties.

Now there were two arch-mage level threats about to breath down Gothwrain's neck and the three of them all they had to do was set up the fight in their allies favor before moving far away and watching the fireworks.

With a gesture of her hand an illusory image of the tower appeared in their vision, a series of points started to glow brighter on the image as the internal map of the tower became visible.

"Our main targets are recovering the Oracle gem first and setting up the beacons second. Tertiary to both of those is getting into contact with Jzu Jzu for retrieval. The man's old enough to know what he got into and skilled enough to get out of it." Lydia said, coldly.

A silent nod was all she needed to know that they were ready for what was to come. As one, the three of them moved, a perfectly oiled machine as they rushed towards the tower. The stealth effect they were under held up firmly, keeping everyone and everything from noticing them; even air-currents were forced to ignore them.

Sadly, the effect's strength quickly weakened the moment they entered the building. Magnus had warned them it would happen, as powerful it was, it wasn't too flexible without him there to manipulate it.

This forced them to shift into their smallest form that of rats, just rats wandering through the maze of tunnels that had been purposefully built into the building. And even as their Systems allowed them to do quick work of any digital lock and their hard-earned skills tackle the mechanical ones, each one was another tick towards their reveal.

Unfortunately, they only made it to their tower's inner sanctum and deployed the beacon before they were found out.

It was the telling smell of those stinking cigars that warned them they had been found out even before the alarms were triggered. It made Lydia wonder how long he had known. In a moment she discarded the idea that they were somehow tagged, Magnus and Milo had both given the clear that there was absolutely nothing on or in them that they didn't know about. But she didn't discard the fact that the old rat could have external ways to know where they were.

"I would have expected that you three would have beelined for my neck." Gothwrain said in a placid tone.

None of them answered, it wasn't just old habits dying hard. But it was also giving in to his mind game if they answered and gave him any kind of information.

The old rat gave them a look, tapping on his cigar after taking a deep breath through it.

"Not even a curse thrown my way? Maybe you three did grow while away." He said, giving them a measuring look. "There's something about you three that chan-" The old Wererat moved even before he finished talking, dodging Moisha's attack.

But not well enough to dodge the electrical arcing out from her weapon. The lightning bolt shot out almost like a living being, biting down on the rat's wrist and eliciting a small sound of surprise.

"Well, well, well, that's a new trick." The old rat said sourly. "But nothing I can't deal with."

Lydia didn't need to look towards Romeo to feel her partner and teammate let her know that the old rat had felt the attack. And while that meant they weren't powerless against him, it would still not be their job fighting him. Their main goal was still retrieving Oracle.

She attacked just as Romeo did, and as they expected, Gothwrain dodged the attack, allowing the two elementally-opposite attacks to hit each other and explode into a dense fog that covered them as they shot away from their enemy and towards their target.

Not that it was too effective and took mere moments for him to rush after them as if the fog hadn't even been there.

It became painfully obvious that being hundreds, if not thousands, of years older than them had given Gothwrain plenty of experience, and their fighting retreat was quickly becoming a fight against getting caged as doors and hallways became blocked.

It also became obvious that some of the misses and lucky breaks they got weren't just chance as Romeo could feel the Wererat's anger as they kept slipping through his fingers. The old rat was cursed and they could very well tell where it came from.

Lydia felt a very grin of satisfaction form on her lips as they closed in on their target.

But it couldn't be that easy.

The three reacted differently to the danger. Lydia momentarily shifted into her smallest form to slide through the small holes in the web of wires that had risen. Moisha's whole body shifted into pure electricity, darting through the holes. Romeo froze the ground and use it to slide, frictionlessly, under the danger.

"Rusty?" A female voice asked and Lydia knew they were in danger, more danger.

They could run from Gothwrain and hopefully achieve their objective, but balancing him and Elder Sherisa was a different matter. It meant that they needed to make an opening, and for that they would have to stop running.

Moisha was the first to move, her linked, magical tomes projected out and quickly started to unleash slow moving balls of magical electricity, filling up the room with hazards to force their enemies to move.

Lydia pulled Searing Devourer, and for the first time she felt the weapon fully agreeing with her feelings. She hated the two old Wererats, and her weapon relished in those feeling, eager to break loose.

The weapon's hungry flames licked the air, eating away at any loose magical energy, sucking in the room's temperature too. Similarly Romeo's Icy Moon was pushing temperature away from him, cooling things.

"Nice trinkets you found." Gothwrain said derisively as he moved around, easily dodging Moisha's spell.

They did their best to ignore them, feeding her emotions to her blade, growing them into a torrent of malevolent flames. It wasn't just a wave of dark fire, it was a wave of dark fire that quickly ate Moisha's spells to grow more and more dangerous.

She could see the acknowledgment of danger in the two older fighters' eyes before they moved close to defend from the attack.

Her eyebrow twitched momentarily as she saw the two of them come out untouched from the fire. But that was okay.

Their true attack had time to prepare. After releasing the fire she had shifted into setting up their combination attack, and the flow of temperatures and energy had reached it's peak to catch their enemies by surprise.

The three elements merged into one single attack of pure energy, it ate through the ground, air and even space trembled as it passed. If there had been acknowledgment in their eyes before, there was outright panic now, and Lydia felt a dark delight in seeing it.

It was over in a moment and the results were better and worse than she expected. Both Wererats were showing injuries all over their bodies, injuries that were having a hard time fixing themselves. Unfortunately they were both still standing.

"Okay, that was a surprise." Gothwrain spit what was left of his cigar before dropping a handful of what appeared to be pebbles. "I was hoping those charms would save me from more worthy opponents… but I think it's just that you three ain't so small anymore."

With just a gesture from his hand all sense of fairness disappeared as magical chains wrapped around their bodies.

Sherisa seemed to be happy by staying back and just watching as the old rat walked towards them.

"I wondered where you three had run away to, I even thought about hunting you down and dragging you back… but here you are now, you should have remained gone, because now I get to teach you the error of your ways." He grinned as he pulled a silver blade and pressed it against Lydia's cheek.

But nothing happened, not even the faintest hint of the material burning her.

She couldn't help but to grin, even as her life was held on by a hair, she grinned and gave the old rat a smug look.

"What…?" Sherisa said from behind as she walked forward.

He tried again, pressing it against Romeo, getting absolutely nothing again.

She let out a chuckle as the bitch that may be her mother snatched the blade out of the old rat's hand and pressed it against Moisha. Except that instead of getting nothing, she was launched back as her body suddenly broke down into pure electricity.

The flash and explosion caused the spell holding them to break as Gothwrain's attention was broken by the surprise.

They jumped back as Moisha took form between them, a gem on her hand.

"Wait, when did you get that?!" Gothwrain cried out with pure wrath.

Lydia chuckled. "Just making sure nothing's holding them back." She said, loud and clear.

"Them…?" He asked, confused.

She didn't need to answer as space was sliced open in front of them, opening a gate for two figures to step through.

"What?! No! You should be dead!" Gothwrain raged on.

Jonathan Digger cracked his knuckles. "Unfortunately for you, Gothwrain, it seems your plans failed." The man looked over his shoulder towards the gem Moisha still held, and his features softened for a moment before hardening once more as he turned towards their enemies. "You three, go, this is going to get very dangerous."

They didn't need to be told again, the three of them jumped through the portal, feeling it close just as the last of their tails passed through, feeling the sensation of battle magic nearly tickle their backs.

She turned to Magnus. "I would have thought you would have wanted a part in that."

The monster just laughed. "As fun as it would be, it was their fight, similarly of why there was a need it was the three of you who set things up." He answered. "Between their preparations and the beacon you deployed making sure neither of the two old rats have any chance of escaping, they will be dead." He added. "I made sure of that."

She felt a familiar shiver going down her spine. Just a reminder what kind of monster they had chosen to follow. Not that it bothered her as much as it did before, sneaking into the ship turned out to be the best screw up they had ever done.

---

"It's done?" Magnus asked as the two men returned.

A solemn nod and a pair of fist-sized stones were handed over to him. He only needed a moment to check to confirm the two Wererats had been completely captured, he could tell it was the Truth.

"Good." He put those away and gently handed Jonathan a box with his wife's gemstone over. "You can ask Milo for help if you want." He added.

"Ah, no, this is something I've to do myself. I'm grateful for the offer, but…"

"No, no, it's okay, I can understand that." Magnus said, gently. "I let you two fight them after all for the same reason. Good luck." He said and sneaked a small Blessing of Luck.

It was nothing major, more of a Boon if he had to be honest. Just well wishes.

He watched the two men leave. He turned towards the two stoned rats. "As for you two, I think you will enjoy what Milo has in store for you." He chuckled as he put them away and moved towards the pocket dimension where his original was currently working.

"So it's done?" Traveler asked.

"Yup, one less problem." He answered. "How's the Negative Infinite Engine?"

"Crazy comes short to describe it." His original replied. "I mean, I've been working on it a lot, but I'm less than a quarter through the schematics, and I'm being generous with that estimate. I can see why Dreadwing took literal ages to finish it."

"Dreadwing was almost mortal, or at least as mortal as Dragons are." He noted.

"I agree, most likely why he never truly made it to Primordial level on his own. But it also means I may need to free myself a bit to properly study and work on it."

"What did old Gina said?"

"Mostly wished us luck and promised to get us the necessary materials, which may take as much, if not longer, than what we may need to properly study this." The original pointed to his work. "If this work I may need to ask for the positive side to take to dad, I bet he would be interested in studying it."

Magnus let out a whistle. "That's some impressive bit of magitech then."

"It's actually not. If I had to describe it, it's more of a mechanism that utilizes the World's constants to get a desired result. This Chaos Engine's effectively just a waterwheel utilizing the cosmic currents to generate power."

He thought about it. "I wonder if that means we could use this knowledge to create fake Infinity Stones, as they are effectively physical representations of cosmic constants."

"Let's not get ahead of us, first we study this, then we build it, then we see if we can duplicate it later." His original said. "Have you checked if Gina still has the mini Chaos Coil? Because it may be useful to study once we are done with the theoretical part of this study."

"I will go over later, I imagine Jonathan and Theodore may be busy with Oracle. So most likely the whole family will need some time." He said. "Plus Brittany should be going into labor pretty soon."

"Yeah, better wait until later. For now come here and help me, maybe we will finish before the year ends." His original joked.

Magnus let out a small chuckle before joining him, synchronizing their memories and getting to work.

---

Hope, or Stardust as now everyone had gotten to call her, had to admit that it had taken longer than she would admit to fully accept the fact that multiple Worlds existed. She could wrap her head around her Reality being the result of dreaming Eldritch Gods. But to think there was more even after that…

Still, maybe she hadn't fully understood what it meant, but it didn't mean that she hadn't fallen in love with more than just the most gorgeous tree/goat lady as she had found that she had found a hearty liking for adventuring and archaeology, which in their current World wasn't too different apparently.

She had been to nearly half a dozen trips all over the world and seen so many new things. And also scared her companions more than once as she had apparently lost all sense of danger. It was just hard to worry about injuries when she couldn't die, like at all.

Plus Milo had made sure her body would heal itself back to pristine no matter what happened, so at most she would be inconvenienced momentarily before she was back to normal. Even her clothes had been enchanted to fix themselves and keep her from having a wardrobe malfunction.

She had been skewered, squished, sliced, sawed, shot, seared, stunned, and many other harms that started with s.

Which was why they had asked her to take some time off and try to remember to be more careful. While nothing would kill her, the people she adventured with could still get a heart attack.

Thankfully there was plenty for her to do outside of wandering blind into danger, like shopping and such. She had enjoyed a few outings with the girls, but Brittany was entering labor and she felt better by not being around.

That was why she was wandering all alone, and it felt a bit lonely.

So when she saw a familiar face she rushed over to greet them.

"Hi!" She said, smiling warmly as she grabbed the hand of one of the female dragons she had met a few months earlier in the middle of the desert while adventuring with Magnus and Brianna.

And it seemed that she remembered her too, by how she had frozen with her pupils dilating.

"...hi?" The woman asked very carefully.

"It's so good to see you again, did you three get out safely from the island?" She asked with full honesty and curiosity.

The woman, and she now realized she didn't know her name, seemed to still be completely lost.

"Oh! So rude, everyone calls me Stardust, what's your name?" She asked as she dragged the woman over to a bench.

It took her a moment to answer her, "… I'm Thirty eight."

Stardust looked at her. "Oh, that's a curious name, anyways, how's your husband? I know Magnus likes to play tricky, so I hope he's okay." She said. "His name was Flaunteroy, no?"

The dragoness seemed to break out of her stupor. "His name is Fauntleroy, not flaunteroy." She hissed.

"Really? I'm sorry, how are you three doing?"

Stardust's unending positivity, and relentless stream of words, seemed to get the woman to relax and slowly open up.

Apparently Thirty Eight was looking for a way to earn some money so they could recuperate their standing before they tackled their next target. She wondered if the woman realized she was being so open with her, not that she would do much with the information unless it meant people would get injured.

She happily paid for some groceries as the Dragoness led her to where they were staying, and from what she was being told, Fauntleroy had practically burnt their latest expedition's results in buying a proper mansion for them to stay. Which, in her opinion, was a waste since they were just three people.

"I'm home." Thirty Eight called out, getting no answer she turned to her. "Looks like no one's home, let's go put those things away in the fridge."

Stardust nodded with a smile. She was quite happy to have found such a nice new friend.

---

Three closed the door behind Fauntleroy and her as they entered their current house. It was a nice place. But honestly she would have preferred to aim for something more practical and use the rest of the money to invest in some future expeditions, they were running practically on the red.

No matter how much Dragon pride she would have to have at the moment, there was pride and there was spending all of your money on showing off to no one.

Still, she couldn't go against Fauntleroy, she loved him and he had uplifted her from a mere Wyrm to a full-on Dragon, and that was something he would owe her forever. Especially as he had passed the chance to turn back into a Dragon himself in exchange of turning his two consorts into Dragons instead.

"We're home." She called out.

"We are in the kitchen." Thirty Eight replied from the kitchen.

Three shared a look with her sire who raised an eyebrow. The two of them moved carefully towards the kitchen.

She only got a moment to recognize the figure currently sitting by the table before Fauntleroy moved. The resulting crashing sound made her wince for more than one reason.

The horned girl she had met previously in the companionship of that Digger bitch and her asshole boyfriend had been launched by a sudden and swift kick by her sire, crushing the chair she had been sitting on, at least one cupboard and the wall behind it.

"Why did you do that?!" She couldn't help but to cry out. Not only because it was definitely considerable damage to their place. But also because it could open them to reprisal.

He snorted and wiped his hands. "Just dealing with a pest. That should have killed her, if we move quickly and dispose of the body they won't know it was…" His words died down as something moved in the pile of rubble.

Three moved carefully over to check the young girl's situation.

"… this is the part where I say ow, no?" A soft and raspy voice came from the rubble.

She felt herself swallowing dryly as rubble started to move off and a figure got up. Her stomach instantly churned at the grotesque state of the girl.

Her limbs were twisted in unnatural ways, broken in at least half a dozen places each. Her chest had been caved in where he had punched her. One leg appeared to have popped off her hipbone and the other had its knee shattered completely. And her face… a large piece of rebar went in the back of her head and came out of one of her eye sockets, said eye completely missing; she was also pretty sure the girl's neck was broken.

She was standing and Three could see that something had changed about her. Her pupils had turned into rectangles, a fine coat of fur coated her body and her fingers had turned smooth and black.

"What happe… oh!" Thirty Eight stopped when she looked at the girl.

"I'm okay." Stardust's broken voice wasn't exactly reassuring. "Don't worry, I can't die." And as if answering to her words, a nasty and wet pop made them squirm as her knee popped back into proper shape. "Oh dear, this may take a bit of work."

Three took a step back as the girl slowly pushed herself out of the rubble by her own power, deadly injuries fixing themselves in front of their eyes in real time. Even her sire was frozen in shock as only the piece of metal sticking out of her face remained.

"Uh… what's left?" She talked out loud as she touched her face until her fingers fell on the piece of metal. "Oh dear." She grabbed and tried to push forward, letting out a cute grunt as the piece of rubble the rebar piece was attacked hit the back of her head.

Three was practically rooted in place as the girl walked over and turned around. "Can you help me? I don't have eyes in the back of my head." She said in a light and playful tone.

The act of reaching for it felt almost alien to her, as if it wasn't her mind that had told her body to do it.

The resulting sucking sound send shivers down her spine, she was sure she would never forget the noise. Or seeing light coming through the hole before it closed in front of her eyes.

"Much better." The girl cheered. "Anyways, I'm Stardust, may I have your name?"

Three started to wonder what exactly they were in front of.