Title Here: Multi-fandom Writings

NEW​

Writing isn't something I am actually capable of stopping. Or iterating on the same ideas over and over again. And due to nit-pickiness (and other unspecified issues) I detest creating threads unless I am 100% sure I will finish things.
I would really appreciate some feedback. Any feedback. An emoji. Because a thread populated entirely by its own author is, frankly, depressive.

SFW. I'm not sorry. Violence and mature topics may be present, tagged, but I'm fairly sure they will not cross the line.
Tag rules: three currently longest works get tagged.
Attempts will be made to port over old threads and snippets, that is about as much as I can give.

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UPDATE LOG​

Spoiler: 10.11.2022

10.11.2022 - updated first post, cleaned and reorganized initial posts. updated tag rules and tags. re-organized index, now crossovers are identified first in their most important fandom, and if equal, alphabetically.

Spoiler: 13.09.2022

13.09.2022-1 - tags added. my hero academia. boku no hero academia. it's the same tag. and pokemon.
13.09.2022-2 - there's a tag limit? guess my hero only needs one tag then.

Spoiler: 09.09.2022

09.09.2022 - tag added. danmachi. no, the crossover elements aren't enough.

Spoiler: 26.07.2022

26.07.2022 - first tags added. warframe. dragon age. finally, yikes.

Spoiler: 25.05.2022

25.05.2022 - added descriptions to initial threadmarks. added links to loading screen. organized loading screen fandoms alphabetically. ah, nitpicking.

Spoiler: 03.05.2022

03.05.2022-1 - thread created. title ideas? gone. tags? the usual. actual writing? ahahah i wish.
03.05.2022-2 - preliminary essential posts posted. obligatory snippet posted. real life? knocking on my door.

Spoiler: 15.05.2022

15.05.2022 - organized loading screen by fandoms. only took two weeks. that was fast.

 

LOAD​

• A - Z •​

————————————
• Celestial Menagerie •​

··· A different Celestial magic see Fairy Tail
∴Tags: Lucy Heartfilia, Crossover Elements, Randomization∴
··· Celestial Menagerie NOT see My Hero Academia
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Crossover Elements, Randomization∴

————————————
• Code Geass •​

··· Soundless start || 1.9k
As the new Viceroy is imminent, a new student is suddenly welcome to Ashford Academy, the best school in Area 11 for... those with special education requirements. Too bad she decided to go exploring and ruined everybody's plans.
∴Tags: Euphemia li Britannia, Ruben Ashford, Lelouch∴

————————————
• Danmachi •​

··· Blade Opera start || The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim crossover || 2k
"Hey you. You're finally awake." Ais doesn't know how she became a prisoner in a freezing, faraway land. All that stops mattering when the Black Dragon appears.
∴Tags: Crossover, Other Characters Isekai, Ais Wallenstein∴

··· Fairy Cross start || 7.8k
Starring Miach Familia's recently returned elf skirmisher (with a bit of help from a Jumpchain CYOA, shh!).
∴Tags: CYOA, Self-Insert, Miach Familia∴

··· In Which Bell's Status has Statuses start || Dungeons & Dragons 5E, The Gamer crossover || 3.3k
A minotaur might have killed the boy, and the boy may have made choices in the beyond that he never thought would affect him. Bell's falna has gotten weird, and that's really only the start of how his life has changed.
∴Tags: Gamer-inspired, Crossover Elements, Bell Cranel∴

··· Is it wrong to watch stories from other worlds in a dungeon? start || Multi-crossover || 3.55k
Bell is such a hero-obsessed wannabe that his life as an adventurer starts with a hero-related skill. The impossible, broken, irrational ability to watch hero stories from other worlds.
∴Tags: In Which Characters Watch, Crossover Elements, Bell Cranel, Ensemble Cast∴
∴Crossovers so far: My Hero Academia∴

··· Mad Milk Drinker start || The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim crossover || 5.2k
OC-Insert with Skyrim magic. With a falna that cursed him to dwell in the Dungeon, an elf halfway to crazy (but very good at pretending not to) takes the first chance he gets to enter the service of another deity. Fortunately, Hestia is a softy.
∴Tags: OC-Insert, Crossover Elements∴

··· RunLess start || 32.1k
The dungeon does possess a reward at the end. An outworlder finds herself aching for the thing at the bottom of the dungeon. To aid her, she has the power of hastily chosen runes. Self-Insert in theory. A few elements from Magic: the Gathering.
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Crossover Elements, Slice of Life∴

··· Squad Goals start || Pokemon crossover || 3.98k
The best way to get acquainted with a whole new world is by seeing it. Tiona, Tione and Lefiya embark on a pokemon journey while a way back home evades them. Ais... reluctantly tags along. Anime-inspired, Gen II, Crystal base.
∴Tags: Crossover, Other Characters Isekai, Gen II Games, Anime-like Pokemon, Ais Wallenstein, Lefiya Viridis, Tiona Hiryute, Tione Hiryute ∴

··· Vain Prayers start || 7.8k
Overpowered self-insert in... a world where every member of Hestia Familia died before the story started.
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Crossover Elements∴

◊◊◊ Elven as Old English ◊ here
Amateur level translations of elven sources (spells, dialogue) in Danmachi into Old English. Pronunciation guide not provided, too much (guess)work.

————————————
• Dragon Age •​

··· Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic start || Warframe crossover || 15.2k
Inspired by "When a Stupid FPS Player Falls to Another World", but the quote-unquote ''FPS'' is Warframe. The Inquisition isn't ready for their own Inquisitor and to, to be fair, they're not interested in making it easy.
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Gamer Elements∴

————————————
• Dungeons & Dragons •​

··· MurderBinge for Two, Please see Worm
∴Tags: OC-centered, Gamer Elements, Violence∴
··· In Which Bell's Status has Statuses see Danmachi
∴Tags: Gamer-inspired, Crossover Elements, Bell Cranel∴

————————————
• Fairy Tail •​

··· A different Celestial magic start|| Celestial Menagerie || 2.33k
Lucy Heartfilia runs aw- I mean, departs on her own adventures! Her goal, to bring back Celestial Spirit Magic and discover what happened to break the First Contract! Her magic? Oh, no, that's just the Celestial Menagerie. Completely different thing.
∴Tags: Lucy Heartfilia, Crossover Elements, Randomization∴

————————————
• Genshin Impact •​

··· Asterism see My Hero Academia
∴Tags: OC-centered, Crossover Elements∴

··· On velvet claws start || 800
On a seemingly normal night (instead of being attacked by a masked figure), Furina meets and brings home a cat. Well, it's probably a cat. Anyway, it's cute!
∴Tags: Furina, Arlecchino, Romance∴

————————————
• Highschool DxD •​

··· Red Haired Red Dragon Heir start || 2.9k
Rias attempts a reincarnation perhaps unwise after the fallen at the old church are destroyed by an unknown force. She finds herself with more than she ever expected. Dragons do not go gently into the good night.
∴Tags: Rias Gremory∴

————————————
• Inheritance Cycle •​

··· Jumping off the stage at Kiyomizu see Jujutsu Kaisen
∴Tags: Crossover, Zenin Mai, Saphira∴​

————————————
• Jujutsu Kaisen •​

··· Jumping off the stage at Kiyomizu start || Inheritance Cycle crossover || 5.8k || ⊂ AO3 link ⊃
Sent on a suicide mission because Maki left, Mai is barely saved a miracle in the form of an exploding blue stone. She enrolls in Kyoto the next day, unaware that's the decision that cinches the choice of a very lost dragon egg.
∴Tags: Crossover, Zenin Mai, Saphira∴
​

··· Where cats fear to tread start || 1.1k || ⊂ AO3 link ⊃
Of all the stupid curses to interact badly with a Heavenly Restriction, Maki just had to be hit by the one that turns her into an anime character or something. That would be bad enough. It's that Mai was also affected that throws everything into complete disarray. JJK0 but with catgirl twins. And family drama.
∴Tags: Jujutsu Kaisen 0, Nekomimi, Zenin Maki, Zenin Mai∴

​

————————————
• Jumpchain •​

··· Press F start || 2.45k

Spoiler: Build

Alt-Chain Builder v1.2
>+1 Expansion/Supplement (Crystal Gacha Supplement v0.1)
>Resolve and Leave
>The Entourage
>Heavy Is The Quill (3x)

··· ··· Pokemon
Explanations? No. Gacha? Yes. This might be a sign. Anyways– how about we ignore all that and just go on our very own pokemon journey!
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Realistic Pokemon, Gen IV Games, Gacha Mechanics∴

————————————
• My Hero Academia •​

··· Asterism start || Genshin Impact crossover || 5k
Hoshino Sachi is an alien. OC with access to powers of several Genshin characters.
∴Tags: OC-centered, Crossover Elements∴

··· Celestial Menagerie NOT start|| Celestial Menagerie || 8.55k
People who can support the Celestial Menagerie are actually rare, you know? Not her, dumped in a garbage heap, on a beach of all things, while her brain tried to wring itself like a sponge because of her maybe-quirk.
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Crossover Elements, Randomization∴

··· Crocs for Life start || 3.26k
Midoriya Hisashi is an asshole. SI into Izuku's half-crocodile half-godzilla half-sister.
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Reincarnation∴

··· Monsterability start || Pokemon crossover || 11.76k || ⊂ AO3 link ⊃
Chikara Bang was born to be a hero and flunked out early. For some inane reason, he still follows the dream. Maybe it's the memories of his past life, maybe it's spite. It's probably spite.
∴Tags: OC-centered, Reincarnation, Crossover Elements, Randomization∴

··· shield HERO start || Rising of the Shield Hero crossover || 1.1k
Awakening in the body of teen that believed he couldn't be a hero and offed himself, now-Tetsuya is forced to become a Hero, or else. He supposed the Legendary Shield was annoyed that its true potential had been so thoroughly dismissed.
∴Tags: OC-insert, Crossover Elements∴

··· Is it wrong to watch stories from other worlds in a dungeon? see Danmachi
∴Tags: In Which Characters Watch, Crossover Elements, Bell Cranel, Ensemble Cast∴

————————————
• Naruto •​

··· Sakuragachamon! start || Pokemon crossover || 31.92k
Somebody isekais into Haruno Sakura, an orphan from the Ninetails' attack on Konoha. Life is tough when your isekai powers mess with your chakra, but full of opportunities. Now if only the system wasn't intent on bankrupting her!
··· ··· Sakuragachamon! Hatake Kakashi (spoilers) here || 3.09k
Kakashi's perspective of some events. The one genin he didn't expect to worry about was the one giving him the most headaches!
··· ··· List of pulls (spoilers) here
∴Tags: OC-Insert, Reincarnation, Crossover Elements, Gacha, Haruno Sakura, Randomization∴

————————————
• One Piece •​

··· Fruitflies see Worm
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Crossover Elements∴

————————————
• Pokemon •​

··· Monsterability see My Hero Academia
∴Tags: OC-centered, Reincarnation, Crossover Elements∴
··· Press F see Jumpchain
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Realistic Pokemon, Gen IV Games, Gacha Mechanics∴
··· Squad Goals see Danmachi
∴Tags: Crossover, Other Characters Isekai, Gen II Games, Anime-like Pokemon, Ais Wallenstein, Lefiya Viridis, Tiona Hiryute, Tione Hiryute ∴
··· Sakuragachamon! see Naruto
∴Tags: OC-Insert, Reincarnation, Crossover Elements, Gacha, Haruno Sakura ∴

————————————
• RWBY •​

··· Alignment: Chaotic Schneebling here || 520
Jacques Schnee's problems probably started when his 8-month old daughter started calling him 'modaffoca'. (Un)Fortunately, they didn't stop there, nor did they get better with the rest of his children, nor were they confined to his household. Winter, Weiss and Whitley time-travel.
∴Tags: Time Travel, Winter Schnee, Weiss Schnee, Whitley Schnee ∴

————————————
• Rising of the Shield Hero •​

··· shield HERO see Rising of the Shield Hero
∴Tags: OC-insert, Crossover Elements∴

————————————
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim •​

··· Blade Opera see Danmachi
∴Tags: Crossover, Other Characters Isekai, Ais Wallenstein∴
··· Mad Milk Drinker see Danmachi
∴Tags: OC-Insert, Crossover Elements∴

————————————
• The Gamer •​

··· In Which Bell's Status has Statuses see Danmachi
∴Tags: Gamer-inspired, Crossover Elements, Bell Cranel∴
··· to Bee or not to Bee here see The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Gamer, Crossover Elements, LGBT+ issues∴

————————————
• The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass •​

··· to Bee or not to Bee here start || The Gamer crossover || 3.8k
A modern person gets inserted into the worst possible character of this villainess story, the original-timeline-saintess-actually-personal-villainess, Mielle Roscente. The only option to survive is to abscond the F away, ASAP. It would be impossible without vaguely cheat powers.
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Gamer, Crossover Elements, LGBT+ issues∴

————————————
• Warframe •​

··· Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic see Dragon Age
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Gamer Elements∴

————————————
• Worm •​

··· Fruitflies start || One Piece crossover || 2.45k
A very unwilling person is inserted into Taylor body post-locker. They accept the deal: 3 devil fruits of their choosing, and they just have to remain within Brockton Bay until the end of May. Sea-controlling Kaiju month.
∴Tags: Self-Insert, Crossover Elements∴

··· Nhom start || 7.66k
SI with 'be what you eat' powers. Consolation prize: one free Ziz feather.
∴Tags: Self-Insert∴

··· MurderBinge for Two, Please here || Dungeons & Dragons crossover || 6.1k
A murder without mystery story about a Hexblade Warlock and his patron in Brockton Bay.
∴Tags: OC-centered, Gamer Elements, Violence∴

 

Crocs for Life
✦✦✦✦✦ 1
Well, it goes like this: you are born again.

There's not a lot you remember from those days, thankfully. Too small, too smooth brain for a big mind two dozen years too much for it. Instinct takes over most of that time. Somewhere within, you learn by osmosis and when the time comes that you manage to stay within your skin for good, it does feel like you.

You are called quiet, slow, then delayed and autistic come into the vocabulary. You don't have yet the strength to communicate that you do exist, in here, somewhere. The doctor posits, maybe, it is a mutation-derived developmental delay.

Ah, because you are something like a lizard. It is good that you do not suffer from dysphoric disorders. Those are a thing that can happen too, mutation-derived body or mind dysmorphias.

If you had been reborn into a world just like your old one, you might have had to eat a hat. Instead, this is a world where people are all born with a special ability, a Talent, where you are from. Abilities, Alters, Metas, Gifts, or other names. And yours is being a human crocodile, just like your mother.

Or rather you thought so, until pre-school, and then you started belching fire. Everybody was quite happy, and the village doctor crowed about being right about your glands. You are old enough by then that you have seemingly matured at an incredible rate, going from a mute near-animal to a very bright but quiet child. Everything is blamed on your mutation.

Your mother looks about as much as a human crocodile as you. She is big and strong, and faster than you'd think, and gives out tours to tourists around the islands. She speaks well and is well-studied, and she handles many of the village's problems, going to and from the nearest city.

You are no child, you notice the disparity. Scary mutations live away from the big city where pens and doors and buses are small.

Chloe says: you have both your parents talents. Chloe says: sorry you do not have a father. Chloe says: you are my wonderful child. Chloe says: you'll always have me, Alexis.

She doesn't mean to lie. It is strange, being so uncertain as a child. You know the feeling, but you were an adult when you faced an uncertain future of bureaucracies and incomes and worries.

There was a bad storm while you were at school with all the other children. They found Chloe's body in the cleanup two days later. You mourn a woman who was family and best friend, very alone.

Chloe had many friends who would take care of you, but the government doesn't quite work like that. You wait in the care of trusted people as they check your papers. A peek at the birth certificate, oh dear. A call to the Japanese Embassy, oh wow. Several calls before they get a hold of your father's only contact. His wife. Oh my.

There are conversations you are not aware of. You are not sure you actually want to know their contents, but for your own survival, you feel you should. You are prepared to grow up in the system when those in charge of you explain that your stepmother will take you in.

They use other words and still seem surprised.

You are too. You hope the lady has done this because she is a nice, good person. Other possible reasons are unpleasant.

There is a plane to Japan and introductory classes to a beautiful but horribly complicated language. Your assigned government adult carries several folders of information and frowns severely. He is a good person and you do believe him when he promises you will see him again.

Two people wait for you at the arrivals hall. A fairly short woman that you can smell has caked herself in makeup to hide lingering distress, she looks fully human but for the strange tint to her hair. And a very small boy who stares at you with enormous eyes and smells of recent tears.

You do not blame them for the nervous atmosphere. You aren't just a foreign child product of infidelity. Your Talent, Kosei for them, is distinctly non-human and predatory. At six, the top of your head easily reaches her chest and you out-mass him by an order of magnitude.

Still, they are polite and she smiles as much as she can. She introduces herself as Inko and her son and possibly new brother, Izuku.

And... Oh. Now a lot of things make sense.

---

Spoiler

Noting: mother is named Chloe, you (me?) are named Alexis and thou art Australian-Japanese. Tragedy strikes in december of your sixth year of life.

 

Crocs for Life
✦✦✦✦✦ 2
There’s a very awkward car ride with the Midoriyas to their house. Part of it is the fact that despite your height, you are six so you did not fit the child seat prepared for you. Cars aren’t made with tails in mind. The rest of it is the people.

Mostly, you avoid the eyes of Izuku who’s stuck between blatantly staring and sneaking peeks at you. You can’t read his emotions, but the whole car smells uncomfortable. Midoriya Inko exchanges small talk with your supervisor in accented English. That is one less worry in a sea of worries.

You look at the cityscape through the car window. The Latin alphabet is scarce. Kanas and kanji you will have to know fly by. More people than you’ve ever seen in two lives walk and drive. The great majority look human. You lean your snout against the glass and fall asleep.

The Midoriyas live in an apartment complex that looks like social housing. The interior of their apartment looks too modern and big for that to be true. It is cozy. The legal adults sit down and give you free reign over the television, at a low volume. They start to discuss the paperwork your case worker brought. You sit on the ground. A child sits on the couch and continues his long looks at you.

Finally gathering his courage, Izuku stutters out a small greeting and asks you a question. You guess as much from his inflection. “Sorry. I don’t understand you.” He is quiet. Shouldn’t he be more lively? Well, you suppose even small children can understand spousal betrayal on some level.

You turn the majority of your attention to the television and try to follow the cartoon being shown. You don’t understand any of it.

You are called back. Your case worker sits you down and re-explains what you have already discussed. He is not gentle as expected of a person working with children. Inko’s eyes dart between him and you. He has explained that you are a great deal more mature and advanced than your age. She doesn’t understand yet.

Even in a close future with an expanded meaning of a human person, Japan continues to be a conservative, reclusive hole. Until you are 21, you possess dual-nationality. Midoriya Inko has given you the choice to live with her in a foreign country, but ultimately, you can refuse her offer and grow in the Australian foster system. Neither is going to be particularly pleasant and the choice is a close one.

Provided that, now that she has met you, Inko has no objections, you would rather stay. She doesn’t, miraculously.

“One last thing then,” you inform them “I’ll stay only if Izuku over there wants me to stay.”

You are not worried about Midoriya Inko. She was the one who offered her home to you. Midoriya Izuku, on the other hand, is a kid whose entire life is going to change in ways he can’t control. He should have a voice in this decision, and you want to hear it from his own mouth.

You are not certain what your case worker’s expression means. Inko is open-mouthed.

She better get herself together quick. This is who you are. And you need a translator.

Mother and child whisper back and forth. Are you that intimidating? Finally, chagrined, Inko translates that he’s okay with it but he would like to know your favorite hero.

That is so in-character, you smile. And it’s Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Captain Marvel aka Shazam, Doctor Strange, Wolverine, Raven, Spider-Gwen, Artemis aka Tigress, Ironman and Miles Morales… if you absolutely had to make a top ten listing. Izuku was asking about modern heroes, from his face and your knowledge, but you’ve never had time to pay attention to them. But upon explanation, he starts nodding energetically like the hero fanboy he is. You easily recognize All-Might amongst his mutterings.

Inko makes one last question after some internal debate. It is clear on her face. “What do you think of those without a quirk, Alexis-chan?”

You should have known. Izuku is Untalented, after all.

“Quirks don’t make you more or less of a person.” You frown. “And that’s all there should be to it.” It never is tho, it never is.

And as you think of what you will undoubtedly be witnessing in the future, you feel so very tired already.

---

Spoiler

It's still December. Of note, Inko and Izuku don't live in social housing per se. Just an apartment among others. You are five months younger than Izuku. Yes, Hisashi was a bitch. He's also been conveniently absent for months.

 

originally posted in my danmachi thread here (https://forum.questionablequesting....w-effort-danmachi-stories.11394/#post-3148829) 14.02.2020
minor fixes to spelling only before porting it over.

---

First

The Black Goliath vanished into ash and the 18th Floor collectively held its breath before erupting into cheers. Somehow, they had survived. Rivals hugged, seasoned adventurers cried in relief, and all the wine casks were open. For once, alcohol flowed in Rivira, for free! Already, the most opportunistic brewers were preparing hangover remedies for the low, low price of only mildly eye gouging values.

Erik, the Milk-Drinker, that Crazy Elf, Rivira’s Weirdo, was very glad he didn’t drink. It was tempting to join the festivities, but really not worth it. “Mad Gods and Sane Gods,” he collapsed onto his rump, having spent most of the battle running around casting support magic to prop up the defenders, “what was that?”

“A fucking irregular on the safe floor,” giggled a chientrope face-down on the ground.

“No, really, I hadn’t noticed,” he snarked. “What I wanna know is how the fuck that’s possible!”

The chientrope shrugged her shoulders helplessly in a ‘beats me’ manner. Erik wouldn’t get his answer until later in the night-cycle, as the story of what had happened finally circulated around, as is custom for adventurers, in exaggerated retellings, boasts and arguments.

His mug crashed against the table with a deafening bang, silencing the tables in that corner of the pub. “A goddess?” Deep within his hood, his eyes shone, two points of cold light that fixed themselves onto the low-class adventurer regaling the table with the story. “Did you just say that there’s a goddess… here?”

His gaze and words were so intense that even through the fog of alcohol the lad felt himself sweat. He gulped, eyeing the man still fully armoured this late into the festivities. “Y-yeah, came onna rescue mission fer those bastards Loki’s rescued- wait, where’re ya going?”

Erik was already out of the pub and running through the streets of Rivira. He couldn’t believe it. A god in the dungeon. He’d given up years ago, but now there was a god. In the dungeon. He should feel light, but his every step seemed to drag on, his body heaved, his breaths rasped against his throat. The fact that the entrance to the 17th was blocked didn't factor anywhere in his mind. All he could think was of being late. Of missing the god, like boats passing by.

He had never seen a boat.

He sprinted all the way to the place where Loki’s forces had made their camp for the past days. He stumbled to a stop, only barely registering the alarmed looks that those there gave him. His mind was solely on the goddess, so he did not think of how he would be viewed. A heavily armored figure had just burst into their campsite, features and weapons concealed beneath a hood and cloak. It was no surprise that the adventurers, resting and recovering from the Goliath, jumped to attention, hands going to weapons and muscles tensing.

In his haste, Erik also forgot what had apparently triggered the dungeon into unleashing the irregular boss on Rivira. A dispute between the record holder and some belligerents, in which said record holder’s goddess had been held hostage. As such, everybody’s reactions were understandable when he asked: “Is it true there’s a goddess here?”

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, friend,” a red-haired young man planted himself in front of Erik, “but nobody here wants trouble. And if you’re thinking of starting some, we’ll be more than happy to put ya in your place.”

A tall human rose from the ground with the help of a huge battleaxe. “Leave and we shall have no problems.” Behind him, Erik saw an elf in a green cloak glide with the grace of a high class adventurer, hand on the hilt of her weapons in warning.

Before he could explain that he meant no harm, the tent in front of him rustled and a figure peeked out. “What’s going on out there? Bell is resting!” A short woman with silky black hair in twin-tails huffed.

She was beautiful. There was something almost unearthly perfect about her features. Clad in nothing but a white dress and sandals, a blue ribbon over her arms. She didn’t have a divine aura, but Erik didn’t need it to understand what she was. Her blue eyes, sparkling yet unfathomably deep, told him everything he needed to know.

His knees gave out and hit the ground, provoking startled gestures from the adventurers surrounding him, and tears pricked at his eyes. Then he prostrated himself, forehead against the ground and begged. “Please Goddess! I implore you, let me join your familia!”

““Uh!?”” Surprised exclamations rang around him.

“Please!” He insisted. “Please… take me in.”

He heard light footsteps approaching him amidst hushed exchanges and the rustle of armor and steel. He could only focus on those steps. “You… want to join my Familia?” Came the soft voice of the goddess from above him.

“More than anything.” He told in truth.

So close, he could hear her startled inhale. “Why?” The goddess asked almost warily. “Do you even know who I am? You don’t, do you.”

Erik felt a chuckle “I don’t know who you are Goddess, who your Familia is or even what you do.” He raised his head to meet her eyes. “I only know you came into the dungeon to save someone, but not even of that I was thinking, just that you were here. Do with me as you will. Evil or good, dangerous or not, radical or mundane, I will do your bidding. Keep me forever, discard me if you wish, but please. Please give me your blessing and take me out of here.”

The goddess’ brow furrowed sadly. She crouched down in front of Erik and, when she spoke, all those present could hear in her words the weight of her ageless existence. “Why are you so desperate, Child?”

Her eyes bore into his and the truth leapt from his lips before he could second-guess it. “Because I don’t want to die without seeing if the sky really is that big.” He averted his gaze, suddenly self-conscious. “I. I’m cursed. My… my god abandoned me. It’s nothing dangerous to you, Goddess! I swear it.” He hurried to say. “But the only way to get rid of the curse is to join another Familia. It’s a long story. Very long. Could we, ah,” his eyes darted to the handful of very curious adventurers listening intently, “perhaps talk in private?”

“Lady Hestia…” A long-haired eastern woman dithered, but the goddess, now identified as Hestia, raised a hand to stop her.

“He’s not going to hurt me, are you…” She blinked and laughed. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name.”

He rose to his feet and gave a shallow bow. “Erik, Lady Hestia, and I do so swear.”

“Well met, Erik. Come along.” She turned to walk back towards the field tent she had emerged from in the first place.

A short-haired pallum turned her head to see them enter the tent. She’d been watching over a white-haired human on a cot, and Erik recognized him as the young man that had dealt the final and decisive blow to the Black Goliath that afternoon. In his head, several connections were finally made. This was the Little Rookie, the record-holder, and this goddess was the Hestia, from Hestia Familia. He wasn’t sure if he felt more or less nervous. Hestia’s was a single-member familia, which meant that the goddess was either still new and openly recruiting or, considering her only member, highly selective.

Hestia interrupted the pallum before she could begin to speak, narrow eyes suspiciously watching Erik’s every movement. “It’s Familia business, Lili,” she explained, “I’m sorry but only Bell can listen.” The pallum begrudgingly stood up and left.

She motioned him to sit down, while she perched on the cot the Rookie occupied. The young man blinked tiredly, murmured something but Hestia was quick to soothe him and he fell back to sleep. A fond smile twisted her lips.

“I saw him,” Erik told her. “Defeating the Goliath. We might all owe him our lives today.”

“That’s my Bell,” the goddess sighed. “A really reckless hero. I worry about him a lot.” She brushed a hair away from his forehead then turned back to him. “So. What about you, Erik? You must know I’ve noticed that that isn’t really your name.”

He nodded, having been expecting it. “Yes. But Erik is the name I chose for myself and that I answer to.” After a moment of hesitation, he pulled down his hood, revealing pale skin of a slate colour and eerie, solid blue eyes. Elven pointed ears poked out from a pulled back mass of curly black hair. “If I have a real name, I don’t remember it.”

“A long story, I take?” Hestia

“Shorter than I’d like.” He chuckled without feeling it. “In essence, a God gave me his grace and some gifts, and in return he took my memories and dumped me here.”

She was incredulous, but couldn’t deny the veracity of his words. “How- no. Why?”

“Why do Gods do anything?” He couldn’t hide the bitterness in his voice. “For his own amusement. And, of course, that wasn’t all. Not interesting enough.” A bitter smirk twisted his lips. “So long as I possess his falna, I cannot rise above the 18th Floor.”

It all started as a dream. He was standing in a clearing with fog by his knees, but the sky was clear above him. Constellations that he knew shone above him with pity. He had no idea where he was. He blinked. He had no idea of who he was either.

“Yes, well, mortal minds really aren’t made for this sort of thing. I thought yours might hold up better but NOPE, I just had to scoop all the ruined parts out, so now you're like a potato puff without filling.” A man, an elf and something else at the same time clapped him on the back. “Delicious!”

“What? Who are you? What’s going on?” He shoved himself away from the gentleman only for a claw to grab the back of his neck and reel him in.

“Relax my friend or you’ll end up with your entrails around your neck. For once I’d actually like to avoid that. Except, you know, not really.” A pure and innocent smile twisted the woman’s lips into a grimace. “I’m just a normal Prince, or a God as some of those theoreticians in the Academy say. I have followers and priests, terrible annoyances, always want me to do the paperwork for them.”

“Did you bring me here?” He very carefully didn’t struggle.

“Yes I did, keep up, who else would it have been? The White God? Pssh.” He waved a hand. “They don’t do transmigration, only the old boring reincarnation. No fun in that. And of course you don’t understand, they usually don’t. That's part of the fun!”

“I don’t know who you are, I don’t even know who I am.” They pleaded with the goat.

“Hmm, lemme see.” The satyr, what was a satyr? Looked into his ear and chewed on it for a while. “Forget being a sushi roll, I think you only really have the nori after all. Sort of a wonder you can even talk, it’s probably the metaphysics of semi-planes of existence. Let’s fix that, shall we? No fun if you just die.”

A rice ball was shoved in his hands. He ate it in a single bite. He now noticed his skin wasn’t a human shade.

“Much better. Everything’s there now, but I don’t feel like playing Tetris so I just let it fall where it did. Know where you’re headed to?”

“The Dungeon.” He blinked, then balked. “The Dungeon!? Under Orario? I’m going to die!”

“Eh, try not to. I’d be doing a poor job if you ended up dead before you ended up insane.” The God of Madness he now recognized said next to him. “Now look up and choose your constellation, I need it for the rad tramp stamp I’m giving you.” His eyes fixed on a constellation he’d never seen before yet he knew intimately. “Boring choice, but whatever.”

“Wait, I’m getting a falna? Why?” What was the catch?

The Goddess massaging his shoulders smirked. “We’re playing a little game. I drop you in the Dungeon with my blessing and I’ll check in periodically to see how close you are to chicken soup with alphabet pasta.” That couldn’t be everything. “You can’t leave, too boring. You’re the type to run away, aren’t you? So no on going above. You’re starting at level 1 like all good pcs, so I’ll throw in your starry blessing, racial modifiers and even magic!” He tasted rainbow on the last word. “And a knife of self-mutilation updating. Should be all you need to survive by the skin of your teeth.”

He was definitely going to die, and he couldn’t even slot everything that had just been said into the corners of his mind. He felt like he was missing the dot on the ‘i’ and it was definitely the ‘t’’s fault. “Why?”

“I was bored. Now,” the gentleman smiled with too many teeth, “say Cheese!”

Pain set his back on fire...

“... and then I woke up in this forest. I walked until I saw Rivira and I knew this wasn’t a nightmare. I still tried to leave, but my feet led me astray whenever I tried to find the exit to the 17th. I tried following groups up, but somehow kept losing sight of them, and when I tried joining them, we all got lost.” His fists clenched in his lap with so much force that if it weren’t for his gloves his nails would be drawing blood. Small hands grasped his and kneaded soothing circles, prying his fingers loose one by one. “Cursed.”

“It’s going to be okay.” The goddess told him. She looked tenderly at him, squeezing his gloved hands reassuringly. “We can fix this, can’t we? That’s why you want to join my Familia.”

“Yes.” He withdrew his hands from hers, carefully, and focussed. A sphere of oblivion formed between his fingers and deposited there a letter-opener with an ornate hilt engraved with faces that changed expression depending on how you looked at them. “This is the knife He left with me. Blood drawn with it can be used to update my status.”

“It has to be a divine item,” Hestia sucked in a breath. “How does it even work with the falna? It’s breaking all the rules.” Her fingers hovered over the blade.

Erik shrugged. “I don’t know. It just updates itself according to my wishes. It’s unbreakable by anybody but another God. Doing it will supposedly unlock my falna and allow for conversion.”

Hestia nodded. “Okay.” She nodded to herself again. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Erik gaped at her. His glowing eyes searched her face and up close she saw that they weren’t a solid sphere as she’d thought, black sclera hidden by large, indistinct irises. “It can’t be this easy.” He murmured.

“Why not?” She asked, and it wasn’t pity in her voice but something like understanding.

“You know scarcely anything about me. You don’t know what I am, or- or what I can do? Goddess, you don’t even know my level. I’m not...” Erik gestured at himself and laughed in her face. “I’ve had to do a lot to survive the dungeon, to keep my secrets: stolen, cheated, bullied, -” killed. The dungeon had ground him down to his core, hard, hard and merciless.

Hestia shook her head. “I don’t need to know any of that.”

“Then what was it?” What knowledge had convinced her? What had she devised about him that gave her such confidence? Which secrets had she sniffed out?

“Erik,” the Goddess asked, “how long have you been trapped here?”

“I don’t know.” He gave the rough estimate he used to keep track of major events in the surface world. “Can’t count the days in the dungeon. More than six years, maybe seven. I was almost Level 2 when the Nightmare of the 27th happened.”

“So long.” The Goddess of the hearth, home and family smiled sadly. “Don’t you think it’s time to go home?”

His vision inexplicably blurred and his breath hitched. He tried answering her, though he knew not what he’d say, and pathetic blubbering escaped his lips. Wet trails ran down his cheeks. Hestia kneeled down in front of Erik and let him cry into her shoulder, rubbing his back and letting him air years of desperation.

He was one of her Children now, and if she ever met the bastard that had done this to him, she was going to kick his butt.

---

 

Crocs for Life
✦✦✦✦✦ 3
You meet Bakugou Katsuki much earlier than expected. You are taller than him by a good handful of inches as well. You feel proud for childish reasons. You are a child, mostly. You decide to revel in it for now.

There are bureaucracies to take care of now that you are living in Japan. Firstly, a comprehensive medical check-up. Starting with your quirk, which will have to be registered in the Japanese system in the Japanese way. So a Japanese evaluation is required. Back in Australia, you were only going to get that after you were six.

You don’t have any good quirk names. It is also good that you can name it in English.

All of it means Izuku gets to spend the day at the Bakugou house while Inko drives you both to and forth several places.

A small, not-fluffy haired ill-tempered child glares up at you.

You remember that you stopped liking children because of arrogant middle-schoolers. You turn your back to the jerk and decide that for now, aggressive ignoring will suffice. A sudden dull pain and popping sounds and your tail lashes out in startled defense. The adults scream over your heads. A bruised blonde glares at you extra-hard while his parents make him apologize. Inko frets, Izuku is shaking.

And that sets the mood for every single interaction thereafter.

What a beautiful little psychopath. You will have to invest in anger management classes.

You correct yourself and ask Inko if it would be possible to invest in anger management classes. The poor woman is hiding her face against the steering wheel of the car. About enough time has passed that you feel comfortable interrupting the tail-end of her crying session.

“What do you mean?” She asks as she composes herself.

“I can’t react violently every time Bakugou, or anybody really, pisses me off.” You raise your hands like a mock kaiju. “I have sharp teeth and claws. I will always be in the wrong.” Not a new concept to you. Japan complicates things, because you will not speak the language for a while yet. So you can’t even open your mouth.

Fortunately, you are no longer ticklish. Unfortunately, you’ve put Inko on the verge of tears once again.

You awkwardly try to console her before you resume the trip to the clinic. You never were good at these things.

With a mutation-type talent and no family to compare with, the doctors need to establish an individual baseline. Inko dutifully translates everything the woman is saying to you, the blessed person that she is. So you go through a variety of tests and answer a great deal of questions. Much of it you had already noticed.

You are a crocodile of some sort and in most ways. Your shape is mostly humanoid. You are broad, your limbs thick, with a tail nearly as long as you are tall. A snout instead of a face, scales that feel touch in surprising ways, three eyelids and a predator’s vision. A bit ungainly at first, but you got the hang of it.

It’s always a question of posture.

You are not the first crocodile or crocodile adjacent human, not for a while in this world. The doctor looks up databases to give Inko a generic listing of what you might need. Dietary supplements, pamphlets on basic care for scales and claw etiquette. A lot should be taught at school, you surmise, but you are a bit of a complicated situation.

You leave the hospital with arms laden with pamphlets, keratin and two follow-up appointments for your fire-breathing and your demonstrated intelligence.

Then it’s a treasure-hunt for animal-form clothing stores, measurements, shopping and more shopping. Special shoes for people with non-standard feet. Shirts with rip-resistant mesh openings for your back scales. More tail-appropriate shorts and underwear. It’s a struggle to not get skirts, but you manage it, for now. None of it is custom.

Nor should it be, considering you are still a growing body.

You also manage to get Inko to slow down and have a cup of tea. You discuss the possibilities of bunk beds, as you slept in a spare futon. She is still a bit awkward talking to you as if you were another adult. Which you are. But she is quickly getting more and more comfortable with it.

All in all a productive day.

---

Spoiler

Mmm, biases at play. Favorite Bakugou pairing: Katsuquences. I've warmed up a tiny little bit to him in the meanwhile. The writer has. Not the crocodile, ahah.

 

.1

Wake up. You’re standing up on a beach at night. There’s a white, crystalline feather shoved into your mouth.

You gain powers from eating things that have powers. You have no idea how you know that.

Gulp.



For the record, Ziz feathers taste like tears, INT and mirror. With a distinct aftertaste of smugness. My mouth tasted of, for a lack of better words ‘Gendo Ikari smirking behind folded hands while the glare of his glasses obscures his eyes’ for hours. Ziz in the Sky with Diamonds. It’s the good stuff.

A day and a half later, I find myself, entirely of my own volition I assure you, in front of the hospital. It’s big, gray and has more run down watermarks than a zebra has stripes. It’s just like every other building in Brockton Bay. I waltz up to the reception area without being looked at twice. It’s honestly really weird. Nobody stops me and I reach the reception desk without any problem.

“Excuse me, I was wondering if I could visit a patient?”

The nurse behind the plexiglass shoots a tired look at me and asks me who I want to see. I get the feeling the glass isn’t here to protect him from a virus. Might be the scratches and knife marks, just a bit.

Only when I tell him who I want to see does he sit up and pay more attention. Not ideal, but I prepared for it. Today, I’m just Christopher Reid, the lucky student council dude who drew the short straw and gets to skip school to deliver crappy, store-brought get-well-soon cards.

I wave the fake flowers in my hands with my best teenager brown-nosing face. “It’s okay if I leave these? They’re, like, plastic. They don’t need a jar.” Really, the hard part is keeping my voice low enough to sell the whole “male” thing.

“Real plants aren’t permitted in most wards. That was a smart choice. Third floor, ask at the nurse station to your right.” I sign a list, get a little paper bracelet saying ‘Visitor’ and just like that, I’m in. On the third floor, it’s even faster. I get a room number, directions, and free reign. Realistically, I’m spoiled by 2020 security measures.

She’s not alone in the hospital room. I freeze on the doorstep, mentally cursing myself and everybody else. All this work to hide my tracks and I have a witness? Luck is on my side, because the woman on the second bed is tied down and snoring. I’m not even going to bother trying to guess what the meds she’s on are. I can just thank god that at least one of them is a sedative.

My target is on the first bed. Laying down with her eyes open and staring into nothing, Taylor Hebert doesn’t notice me.

I didn’t have any expectations. She’s definitely taller than me, stupid americans, and her face is not… you know, really pretty. It’s not my fault I notice her physical appearance. She’s the one who made such a big deal out of it in the first arc. Whatever. Yes, I’m a shallow person, and I have better things to do than looking at teenagers’ looks.

She doesn’t react to me putting the flowers down, or the card and the letter. I poke her arm and nothing. I pinch her lightly.

“So far, so good.” I say to myself. “Hey… Taylor. Taylor?” No answer. “Awesome. Great.”

With an ear tuned to any sounds from the corridor and my eyes on the kid, I carefully press down on the crook of her elbow, where the catheter is inserted.

Then she blinks. I freeze. Nothing happens. There are at least ten reasons to be very afraid, and I’m feeling all of them. Too late to turn back now, I suppose. Lifting the tape holding the needle down, I press on the vein until a drop of blood appears. Two or three, really. I wipe then with my fingers and-

Cannibalism alert: I lick my fingers clean.

Unsurprisingly, it tastes like a bunch of wasps buzzing, repeatedly hitting the inside of a small glass cube. It unfurls behind my eyes. I push it back down for now.

I know three things. That Taylor Hebert triggered. That my power really, really works. And that this is my one and only chance.

Skitter doesn’t bleed much, protected by spider silk and beetle shells.

No time to lose. I take a plastic bottle from the inside of my jacket, unscrew it with one hand and stick it next to Taylor’s vein. I have five minutes. Slowly, agonizingly, the bottle fills up. I start eyeing her hair. Easier to take… several thousand orders of magnitude grosser. Perhaps. Does texture also get filtered by my ability? Because blood and alien crystal did not feel like blood and alien crystal. A shame I got worried about metal detectors and didn’t bring a knife. Pressing on her arm speeds the flow. My legs are legitimately shaking. I cap the full bottle, stuff it inside my jacket and take out another tiny bottle. This one I filled with dollar-store ethanol. It’s a matter of wiping off the evidence, making sure the catheter didn’t slide out and nothing happened.

I do get one single hair.

I don’t think my rush job will trick a nurse. Hopefully, they won’t care about just another random patient! “I’m so sorry, Taylor. Hopefully you won’t… you know.” Remember any of this. My face in particular. “Trust me, if I had any other choice… well, I included some very sound, very adult advice in the letter. You probably won’t take it, but who knows.”

I actually drink my vampiric energy drink in a bathroom just down the hall. The freshest it is, the better. The hair I somehow slurp like spaghetti. Tastes like screaming.

I dare say that plan actually worked, I think as I walk through the hospital’s parking lot/entrance. If Taylor does remember anything, I’ve left quite a few false trails. I’m not a Winslow student, which she’ll be looking for with what I’ve written on the letter. Christopher Reid is a real person, part of Winslow’s last year’s student council, who will hopefully not be accosted by either Skitter or the police. He’s blonde anyway. And a dude. This whole plan cost me twenty bucks and one day in the public library.

Oh, the letter? Just the best advice I could give her. Drop school now. With an explanation of the sunk-cost fallacy, a sprinkle of personal experience, and a few links to online support groups and research thrown in.

---

Spoiler: power

Power: Eat from power-entities, get powers: precognition immunity, control some bugs.

 

.2

My power isn’t straight up ‘you are what you eat’, or ‘you are immune to what you eat’. It’s a choice somewhere in between.

That day, two days ago my god, I’d eaten one Ziz feather. A small one, dow type if the Simmurgh had dow. I’m not sure of what the human equivalent is. Doesn’t matter, because it was potent.

There’s nothing more terrifying to fight than large-scale, Worm-like precogs. That was my mentality when it went down. So that was what I gained: precognition immunity. Boring, a staple, contrived and a plot-device by the author of yet another fic? Sue me. Read my lips. Sue-Me.

I don’t know what dropped me here. Honestly, I could very well be a clone, or a mind-whipped Simmurgh bomb that she dropped, including fake memories of another world where I read a web-novel about the events of one particular future. I have a friend who does philosophy, but personally, I don’t.

It doesn’t matter. I’m here, I may die horribly from a million things or worse, ‘survive’ a million horrible things. Maybe I am a laser-guided precog missile to… something.

There is nothing I can do about that. Trying to fight causality like that is like Master Shifu sending the Duck to Tai Lung’s prison. Spoiler for Kung Fu Panda: The Duck was the only reason Tai Lung got free. Oogway was right.

Don’t worry about it, and do your best to be happy.

Is it mighty suspicious that I had a key to a shitty motel room paid for one week in my pocket? Yes. But I don’t want to sleep on the streets just yet. I do have to use soup kitchens but well, nobody said life in another world was easy. Oh, wait. May several thousand authors feel my not very justified rage!

Anyway, I’d targeted the protagonist for a couple of reasons. Besides knowing where and when she’d be available as a mcdonalds on legs, if you’ll excuse the vampirism. First, bugs is a versatile power that has already been muchkined to hell and back by people far more dedicated than me, sparing me a lot of trouble. Second, it was almost made to surreptitiously take bits from people for me to eat.

Now, I didn’t have Taylor’s exact power. For one, I’d only gotten one bottle of blood out of her. Sure, it looked like a lot of blood, but I’d done the calculations to make sure I wasn’t taking too much. Not even half a liter of blood, at most half a percent of her body weight. It wasn’t a one to one thing, but maybe it was close.

I’d tweaked what I’d gotten, semi-consciously. It’s hard to explain. I’d thought very loudly to myself ‘oh goLLY, IT WouLd bE nICe if I GoT Less BUgs in SNIPEr VIEW tHaN all tHe BUGS In hUggiNg raNGE!’ and it worked. I only got to control a kilogram of flies instead of scary Skitter numbers, but one thousand wasps were nothing to laugh at. My ‘select your fighter’ range is big, over one hundred meters, and my ‘control your army’ range is a bit bigger than that.

This is less than one percent of Skitter’s power. Talk about putting things into perspective.

---

Spoiler

Something older I had laying around. It's exam time. aka Escapism time.

 

Crocs for Life
✦✦✦✦✦ 4
Dinner on your second night at the Midoriya household is a bit awkward. You know which blonde to blame.

Izuku picks at his food. Inko can’t focus on her plate while her eyes are playing ping-pong between the children. You eat with gusto. Food is never to be unappreciated. A new childhood barely squatting over the poverty line only reinforced that belief.

Another consideration: how your existence will impact this family’s finances.

Done with your food, you decide to dive into the problem right away. You give Inko a look. You are naming it the Provisory ‘I need a translator’ Look Nº1.

Hoping she will follow through, you just ask: “Izuku. Why are you upset?” Inko translates and you don’t need to know Japanese to understand Izuku’s denials. You snort. There’s an expression but it doesn’t translate well to English. “Please don’t lie, it’s obvious that you are upset at me, or about me. If you don’t want to talk about it now, that’s okay. But you should. It’s not, hm, it’s awful to feel angry. Saying something helps, even if it’s to another person.”

Inko translates that with pauses, shooting you uncertain looks. Izuku looks mulish and on the verge of tears.

Tears come from Inko’s side of the family. Evidence A: Inko herself. Evidence B: Your direct paternal genetic ancestor. Evidence C: You, a notoriously crier, not having a single tear for the last couple of years. Counter-evidence A: Crocodiles, of which family’s you are now part of.

Izuku succumbs to his genetic imperative to cry at the slightest emotional pressure. You doubt it’s his high empathy in this particular case. Since you do not understand Japanese and Inko gets understandably caught up trying to talk with her son and reason her way through his minor breakdown, you end up staring at the wall.

A smartphone, that’s what you need.

Inko manages to calm the situation down and explains, through her own tears, that Izuku had gotten very upset because of Bakugou. Not in those words.

Unfortunately, you get where this is all coming from. Kids get into their heads that a family is a mom and a dad. Some of them know that it can also be just a mom or a dad, or even rarer, two moms or two dads. Suddenly siblings because there’s another mom that is not also their mom? It’s not like there was a divorce and a single mom got together with a single dad.

In Bakugou’s head, I was fake family. Izuku disagreed, rightfully. Then it turned around and became ‘your dad doesn’t love you or your mom and got himself a better family’! Which was painfully close to the mark, probably. You highly suspect that Izuku’s quirklessness got brought to the table as well, considering it was Bakugou. Untrue, because you were conceived before Izuku was born, much less diagnosed. But emotionally? It had to ring very true to my new little… older brother.

You want to say something but Inko’s red eyes are damning. Easy to forget this was the woman whose husband cheated on while she was pregnant. A husband who was not answering his phone and could very well be womanizing his way across several foreign countries at this very moment.

You exhale. No point in getting angry.

Short and sweet then.

First, you ask Inko if she is okay. She is fine, of course. Then you apologize and explain that you have opinions that might hurt a bit to hear, and that you can shut up and let her take the lead.

There’s a moment where she just looks at you. You don’t know what she expects to find. Even with a human face, you were an emotional wall. Opaque and unknowable. As a saurian, subtle mood indicators are all likely incomprehensible to a regular person.

To your surprise, she assents.

First, you tell her, and only her, that you’re sorry and you are angry, because she got hurt. You like that you were born, but she shouldn’t have had to be hurt.

To Izuku, it’s a bit more complicated. Nobody can tell another person how to feel.

“I never had a dad. I never even met him. I can’t miss what I don’t have.” In another life, maybe this would anger you, but again, your emotional reactions tend to be skewed. “A father only counts if he’s there. He only loves you if he’s there. So, to me, that guy was never a father in the first place. Just, ah, one of the ingredients that made me and made you. All the work was done by moms. So: that guy doesn’t matter.”

Inko manages to translated back Izuku’s last, mumbled words. “Families are supposed to love you.”

It makes you so mad. There’s a lot of anger there. You were old when you learnt the truth of that matter in the world. And it shone so many ugly lights into seemingly innocuous memories.

You will never dispute that. You have never been able to just open your mouth and tell them: those people are not your family. You have never been able to push back against your own family, to lay down the lines you needed. Today, you do. You have a little older brother who needs you to.

“Your family is right here in this room. It’s her and only her. If you want, me too. But nobody else.” You are firm. Nobody else.

---

Spoiler

Awkward writing go! People are hard. The writer has to believe this wouldn't hurt the crocodile's relationships much ahah.

 

---

Second

“I’d apologize, but I get the feeling you’d just tell not to, Lady Hestia.” The strangely-skinned elf, blotchy-faced from his first crying jag in years, sniffed and wiped the rest of the tears away with the back of his hand.

“That’s right, I would!” The short goddess crossed her arms over her generous bust, sniffing herself and blinking tears away. “There’s nothing wrong with crying.”

Erik felt his lips curl into a rare, sincere smile. He would never regret approaching any god or goddess crazy enough to descend into the dungeon, but Hestia was assuaging all the big and little fears he had about the divines. He’d never managed to imagine what his life would be like after he left the dungeon. The possibility was so remote, so out of reach, that his mind couldn’t build the scenario for him. But now, he felt like maybe he would have a family. Friends, people he could trust. It was so exciting it was almost scary.

“So,” Hestia bounced in place, “take off your shirt. Let’s convert you!”

“Could I... properly introduce myself first? Not that I’m complaining, but this conversation has not gone as planned. And I had planned.” He’d expected to do far more begging, bribing, and advertising of his value.

“Eheh, sorry.” The goddess blushed slightly and poked her finger together. “Let me start then: I’m Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth. My Familia only has one member and we aren’t very rich or well-known. I can’t give my Familia much, but I promise to help all of you, anyway I can. This,” she indicated the boy still deeply sleeping behind her, “is Bell Cranel, the first member of my Familia. He just became Level 2!”

He nodded. “Worry not Lady Hestia. It will be a pleasure to work with him. Even in Rivira we heard about the new record holder. And we all saw him strike down the Goliath. He’s a hero.” Erik pondered for a moment before deciding to grasp the nettle. “You know, he actually managed to beat my record.”

“Huh? Your record?”

“To Level 2.” He let himself smirk as he revealed a feat he had kept secret for years. “I’m not sure of the exact number, my first weeks were confusing, but I managed to beat the Sword Princess’ record by three to four months.”

“Eh!?” Hestia gasped loudly. “No way! How!?”

He shrugged, still smiling, though more subduedly. “No offense meant to the Princess, but she didn’t start her dungeoning career in the middle floors. Only the best of the best can even make it down here solo, and that’s at Level 2. Even the weakest monsters are death sentences to Level 1s.”

The Goddess made a sound like a mouse and shook. “Eek.” She was realizing what it meant to be a fresh Level 1 on this floor, abilities all at zero… She tried imagining Bell when he had started. The baby-faced adventurer that had gotten home so very excited on his third day because he’d finally managed to kill one goblin… She blanched even further. “I-I feel like I should be asking how you managed to survive five minutes...”

“Luck, speed and a very well-honed sense of self preservation.” Erik gave her a thumbs up, eye glinting. “In the beginning, I stayed inside the walls until I ran out of food. When I left for foraging, I always tried to shadow other parties, and even then, running from monsters had my Agility at D before my first month was over.”

Hestia could picture it. “And then you started taking small steps to get stronger but because all the monsters are so high leveled...”

Erik winced. “Ahah… And then Rivira was destroyed again.” He saw the Goddess’ smile become fixed. “It’s a regular thing.” Her eyes started looking far, far away. “But I survived! As you can undoubtedly see…” Her ponytails started twitching minutely. “... I got stronger?”

Hestia deflated, burying her head in her hands. “Just like Bell…” she muttered to herself before giving an empty chuckle. “He's going to be a problem child too, I can feel it. Whyyyy?”

“Lady Hestia?”

“It’s nothing. You wouldn’t happen to have a rare skill that makes you grow stronger faster, no?”

A pointed silence filled the tent.

Hestia collapsed on her back and sobbed. “Why me? I only wanted a normal Familia that other gods wouldn’t try to steal away because they have super rare skills and strong spells and argh! What did I do to deserve this!?” Erik opened his mouth only for her to spring back up and shove one finger in his face. “It doesn’t matter! You’re going to be my child and I’m not abandoning you or Bell just because of some stupid inconvenient skills! Now, clothes off!”

“Godde-”

“Clothes off!!”

“Okay, okay!” He backed away from the tiny divinity almost perched on his lap now.

“H-hu… Lady Hestia? Is everything… all right in there?” A girl’s voice came from the outside, making them freeze.

Hestia jumped off the elf, beet red, and poked her head out. “Of course Lili! I’ve just decided to accept Erik into my Familia, so I need to see his falna, that’s all! Everything’s fine! Nothing weird or abnormal, just a perfectly normal conversion that we absolutely need some privacy for, you understand!” She said without stopping, voice getting progressively more high-pitched.

After one beat of silence, there were a few mutters and complaints from the other side, but Hestia had already turned back and closed the tent flap behind her. “Hmph!”

Erik stared at her from where he was sitting down, hands clutching his cloak reflexively closed.

Hestia took a deep breath and tried to force down her blush by sheer force of will. “There is nothing indecent about a god checking a child’s falna. Please remove your armor and shirt.” She enunciated clearly.

Nodding, he unbuckled his cloak and set to removing the heavy armour he donned. Gauntlets, cuirass and the jerkin underneath, all made from monster drops. He had purchased or looted all of his equipment from Rivira or below, and it had the air of high-class equipment, patches, dents and all.

As more and more of his blue-tinted skin was revealed, Hestia wondered out loud. “Are you a dark elf, Erik? You don’t look like any elf I’ve seen before.” She’d only seen one dark elf in person, and it’d been from a distance. Darn Freya showing off. From his skin-tone, to even his body shape and the tight curls of his hair, Erik had very little in common with dark elves. But what other elf type could he be?

“No, Lady Hestia. I am a deep elf, Dwemer in my tongue.” He chuckled somewhat bitterly. “Elves that lived under the ground. They called us dwarves although we are, rather obviously, a different race entirely. I… don’t believe there’s any more left other than me. Guess He thought it would be ironic...” He added the last almost to himself.

Hestia thought back to all she knew of the mortal world. All the races that had come and gone, from those exterminated by monsters, to those smited out by her peers in oft-forgotten times. Yes… that made sense, quite unfortunately. She shared a pained smile with her soon-to-be child.

Erik bared a very muscular back, unusually broad for an elf of any kind, nicked his own finger on his god-cursed knife and let a single drop of blood roll down his muscles. A rippling design, ichor-coloured, inked itself before her eyes. First and foremost, the mark of his God was a complete mess. Definitely a deity of madness, considering they had foregoned symbolism and straight-up used optical illusions. In layers.

Hestia leaned in, concentrating on what was written and cursing whatever deity they had been once more. “Alright, let’s see…” And promptly bit her tongue before she vocalized anything incriminating in hearing distance of Hermes. Instead, what came out of her resembled a tea kettle at boiling point.

Looking over his shoulder, Erik met her wide-eyes with a proud smile.

“This is ridiculous.” She squinted, shook her head, and squinted harder. “Zeus blast me. Erik? You…” She started counting on her fingers. “That’s… this many. And… that’s that many.”

“It’s not any better than Rookie over there or Nine Hells.”

“Not separately! And yes! Yes it is!” She hissed. “Goodness. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of such… bountiful… err, manifold! Gifts.”

“... I am indeed very skillful.”

That earned him a swat on arm, one that she was sure he hadn’t even felt. “Be ashamed! Now, pass me that.”

She took the small blade from his hands and snapped it in twain.

Amidst the sound of shattering glass, fragments sublimating between her fingers, she heard the man release a tiny breath, eyes wide. “Oh.”

Feeling a proud smile of her own, she reached towards Bell’s bedside and took the Hestia Knife. The black blade parted her flesh eagerly, like it knew what it was being used for. Ichor beading on the tip of her finger, she slashed past chains, drawing the sigils of her presence, her hearth and her blessing. To be always welcome, to rest in safety, to eat plenty and to never be impeded by his own.

Unlike Bell, who’d tensed up in anticipation and embarrassment, a nervous bunny in her hands, Erik relaxed. An old, wary wolf, slumping into her lap as she kneaded his worries away.

And a wolf it was, that she was accepting into her home. A powerful, very big, very scarred and sharp-fanged wolf. His status was something else, even for his level, and if that wasn’t proof enough, Hestia had gotten a glimpse at the achievements worn into his soul. She would no longer have to worry about her first, youngest and most… lucky child.

Taxes however… oh dear.

Hestia felt herself sweat just thinking about it. Erik was just one person, but his level was going to ensure their familia jumped rank once or twice. And the Guild was not going to have any mercy. She’d heard even Hephaestus complain about her taxes, and her friend was a serious, responsible and organized goddess with a large smithing familia that never fell into the red!

Although… Hestia narrowed her eyes at the development abilities dancing cheerily before her eyes. “You don’t look like it, but you are a crafter, Erik?”

The elf shrugged and half-turned to explain. “Of a sort. It started with potions, because those saved my life over and over. And well, nothing was affordable in Rivira. As soon as I could I went from making them for myself to selling them, which gave me so many more options. Plus, there’s the racial bonus but I haven’t done a lot with it. I’ve dabbled in smithing, but by then my needs were better covered by what I already had. The materials are easy to get but the tools not so much, which is a shame. Although,” he tilted his head, “with the last thing I am having a lot of fun making and enchanting things…”

The goddess suppressed a smile. That had been a craftsperson’s ramble. “I’m just asking because you’re clearly a mage,” tho he really, really didn’t give off that impression, “and you also have this…”

“Yes.” Erik nodded seriously. “I tried it once. Didn’t peddle it, for obvious reasons. Also, it’s too hard to make one of those things in Rivira. I need privacy, peace and quiet to do the delicate parts.”

Mortal and deity winced just at the image provoked.

“Well, you can try again with more success soon!” She assured him.

“Hm,” he scratched his chin with a slow smile spreading, “I’m going to have to find who are the right and wrong buyers. And sellers. They’ll sell cheaper than down here but-”

Hestia grabbed his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “They’ll sell for stupid amounts of money in Orario too.”

“I thought-”

“Not these.” Hestia didn’t blink. “I’m going to have to hide all my children at this rate. You are all god bait.”

“Lady… Hestia?” Erik leaned back slightly.

The goddess slumped forward with a tiny whimper, then shook herself. “And also! These.” She poked the elf on the back. “How? It’s not just… having more! I can read that these changed as you leveled up.”

“From Magnus. Instead of having this,” he lifted three fingers, “I got three of these.” He shook his fist. “And because of whatever rules, when I level up I can switch them up and upgrade them. Well, now you will be able to, I suppose.”

Hestia stared. “That’s even worse than I imagined. Great! But worse.” Definitely hiding Erik and Bell from… everybody. All the goddesses. And gods. She pricked her finger to secure his status from prying eyes. “Let’s… let’s talk more about this when we get back home…”

---

Spoiler

Secret Status for now! Look, he's a biiit broken by danmachi terms but not that much. (Not if you compare him to the protagonists.) Had to give him an edge somewhere. Also, yeah, the dwemer thing just... it fit, ok?

 

Spoiler

JUMPCHAIN? Ahah. Boink!
>Alt-Chain Builder v1.2
>>+1 Expansion/Supplement (Crystal Gacha Supplement v0.1)
>>Resolve and Leave
>>The Entourage
>>Heavy Is The Quill ()
START JUMP: POKEMON (let’s keep it traditional)

“Fuck!” The air is expelled out of []’s lungs as they trip over nothing and fall to the ground. A red hat plops itself unceremoniously on their head. That hurt. The fall, not the hat. “Ow, wait what. Where the… This is not bed.”

A stretch of well-beaten road surrounded by trees greeted them. Looking up, they see a signpost announcing ‘Route 201’, as well as directing travelers towards the ‘Twinleaf’ and ‘Sandgem’ towns. A vague sense of horror and a heady mix of excitement rushes through them. They know this. Vaguely. They sit up, and notice for the first time they have a backpack over their shoulders and something in their pockets.

Reaching into the backpocket of their jeans, they retrieve a phone-like device and their wallet. Probably their wallet. It’s the same obnoxiously yellow colour, but the logo is not. Flipping it open, an identification card falls out.

The details are unnaturally blurred out… until they squint, a headache throbbing for a brief moment, and the information is clear as crystal. “Ooh, a Trainer ID. Honey, no last name… I guess it’s sort of a colour… Female. Ten years old!? What do you mean!? I’m not ten!” She looks down, observes her hands, pats her hair. “... ten? Oh.”

Her moment of stupefaction is broken by a yowl. Cat-wrangling instincts, drilled into her by countless instances of territorial felines, have her on her feet and heading in the direction of the fight after one tired sigh. A black feline is yowling, flat against the ground, as half a dozen really big birds peck and crowd around it, aggressive like she’s only seen in seagulls. Pokemon, the lot of them. She recognizes them, but the names escape her. Looking around, she can’t find a convenient stick, so instead she grabs two handfuls of dirt and gravel and throws them in their direction. Hopefully, enough to scatter all of them.

“Shoo! Shoo!” She yells, and retreats hastily a couple of steps as the birds fly off. Fortunately, into the trees and not towards her.

The cat, however, remains where it is. Unmoving, hackles so raised its real size is probably a lot smaller. (Not that it would make it a small cat by any means.) Dull golden eyes, and black fur with red stripes on its underside. This one, she can name. A Litten. She’s not in Alola, for sure, so the little guy is very far from home. Injured cats, however, she can handle.

“Hey, meow. What happened to you, meow meow… Oof, that paw does not look good.” She talks to it as she knells, carefully approaching as far as it will let her. “Well, this being pokemon… lemme see what I got.”

The bag she’s got is carrying a small bounty. A few potions and pokeballs, just what she needs, and a pokedex. First thing, while it acclimates to her presence, she fumbles around with the pokedex. Her fingers are not the size she is used to, but the interface is very simple. (Childproof, you could say.)

“Huh.” It gives her the Litten’s species, type, a link to what looks like a wiki-like article with information, its general state (predictably in the red) and attributes, and a small blinking icon declaring it as wild. She side-eyes the pokeballs. “Hm.”

The Litten hisses again, but it’s not yowling anymore.

“Okay. Look here.” She removes one potion first, then one pokeball, placing them on the ground in front of her. “I’ve got this and this. I see you recognize this one.” She taps the ball. “I’m not leaving you injured anyway, but would you consider coming with me? I like cats. I’ve worked with cats before. And fire-types are awesome.” She pushes the pokeball towards the Litten.

It (she) bats it away.

“Right, yeah. Okay, I was expecting that.” She would have to try and catch her. Better after healing her a bit, or she might resent her. Maybe. How did pokemon work here?

Regardless, she picks the ball up in her off-hand and pushes the potion forward. That is not immediately batted away. Taking it as a… ok sign, she sprays the Litten twice in quick succession, keeping herself well out of claw range.

It reacts like… well, like a cat. And bounds away. Far more than she should have been able to with their leg like that and before she can react, she’s going up a tree and settling on a branch.

“Great.” She judges the distance and her aim. The prospects: not great. With a sigh, she approaches the tree. It looked like a normal tree from a distance. It is a normal tree, but Honey’s now smaller than she’s used to by a significant amount. In fact, she can not reach the branch the Litten is on. Not even on her tiptoes.

The Litten watches, tail wagging erratically.

“Please, kitty, kitty?” She waves the pokeball the closest she can to the cat. It’s not even a foot away.

And then the Litten bats at her ball, hitting the button and getting engulfed in a red flash. The pokeball wiggles in her hand, once.

Honey stares for a moment. The pokedex in her pocket thrills once. Then she celebrates. “Yes! Yes! My first pokemon, oh my god! Whoo!” She twirls and jumps. “I’m a pokemon trainer! Gonna beat the gyms, try the elite four and be the very best I can be! Ahah!”

Nothing can stop her grin right now.

“My very own pokemon adventure- starts here!”

---

Spoiler

i wanted to. tehe (｡･ ω<)ゞ
Litten because cat, fluff and fire. ... did not consider personality (｡･ ω<)ゞ!

 

“Okay, let’s see.” So, the pokedex has indeed connections to a database, formatted a bit like a wiki, but that’s about it for connectivity options.The synchronization feature appears to be to allow transfer of individual pokemon data to other devices.

On the other hand, the pokegear, the 'phone-like' device, is a smart device. Phone, watch, radio and map all in one. It’s mid-morning in Sinnoh, the radio reception is very spotty and, predictably, Honey only has official-looking numbers programmed into her gear. It’s just a bit isolating.

She’s not sure she wants to release her Litten yet. She’s still thinking of a nickname. Her condition is so-so, according to the pokedex, and she wants to actually read what it has on Littens. Hopefully a how-to-care-for guide is included. But before all of that, she definitely has to do something about the nagging feeling of otherness in her head.

One does not simply appear in another world without… powers? She’s still not exactly certain of what happened. She does not remember meeting a goddess or other powerful entity between now and last night. (Possibly last night.)

It ends up being as simple as thinking about it and, in her mind, she has access to the Crystal Exchange. It looks a lot like a mobile game’s monetization interface. A gacha interface. A quick exploration tells her all she needs to know. Honey has 1000 Gachabucks to spend in crystals, tickets or direct buying options from the CYOA she’s in (plus taxes, plus no discounts applying). Pokemon isn’t a bad place, so she’s not worried. She even has some money still.

“Gimme ten crystals!” She mentally presses the buy button. “Now, let’s try this out.”

Ten basic crystals and she’s going to start by spending two as they are. It almost goes ka-chink, ka-chink in her head. The crystals disappear from her metaphorical hands and a weight settles in her bag at the same time knowledge slams into her head.

“Oh!” Survival Training and an Echorecorder. Immediately she feels much safer with the knowledge that she could make it out in the wild. There’s almost no thought before she spends another three crystals. Instantaneously, she is one HM Collection richer, the proud owner of a parachute-backpack, and built. Well, as much as a ten year old can be built. She would definitely be winning competitions back home. Should she keep rolling? She still has… an incredible amount of gachabucks left, even if she keeps half of them to get a ticket.

Instead, she decides to experiment a bit with crystal upgrading. Five crystals into rank II and III, then combining those… she chucks the advanced crystal into the mental slot. Mechanic drops into her mind. A brief dizzying flash of information before she realizes she can now be the change in the world she has always wanted to be. No more asking people to change lamps, or staring dejectedly at appliances she knows could be an easy fix. A couple of years worth of college education in machinery, all for the cheap price of five crystals.

Out of one hundred total available.

Honey doesn’t let herself wince. “It sounds like a lot… well, gacha numbers are never in your favor but still. Worth it.” She hasn’t gotten anything immediately useful like… well, money. But for now it would have to do.

First, Twinleaf Town. The starting town in Sinnoh. It probably didn’t have much, but at least the region’s Professor and his lab should be there. She sets off immediately. Following the path, steering clear of grassy areas where she can see pokemon flitting to and fro, it’s still a bit of a walk. But the signs are clear and the path well-trodden enough that Honey isn’t afraid of getting lost. Perhaps it’s the effects of her new perks, but it’s obvious to her which way the main path goes in the few crossroads along the way.

It’s mostly a straight path, slightly going up, until, at the top of a hill, where the signpost tells her to turn left. In front, the path goes down the hill into a forested basin, and a glimmer of brilliant water can be seen among the trees.

“Lake Verity, one of the three legendary lakes.” It sounds like a place to visit for sure… or to really avoid. “Nope. I just want to get all the badges and raise a cool team.” She turns on her heel and starts going down the left side of the hill.

She doesn’t suddenly find a town, which seems obvious in hindsight. Instead, she starts by seeing one house. Then one farm further along. And a couple more houses nearby. There are nice semi-paved paths between all of them, and the terrain is semi-tamed in the way of old farmhouses and rural areas. Certainly, she’s going to find the center town and it’s going to be almost twenty buildings in total.

No sense in not asking for confirmation she’s heading to the right place, tho. She approaches an older man who’s brushing a Ponyta outside. She stops politely near the wall and waves until he sees her and comes over.

“Why yes, Twinleaf is that’a way. But there’s no research center here.” He explains. “You must be confusing with the lab in Sandgem. That’s in the other direction.” And he points right at where she’d come from.

“Oh… drat.” The Pokemon Professor isn’t in the starting town? “I must have… gotten turned around. So not good.” Honey can’t help but start worrying at her nails. The route in-game was a skip and a hop, but she spent over an hour just walking to Twinleaf. She’s hungry, a bit tired, her sole pokemon is still injured and she hasn’t read what she needs to know about anything.

“I hope you’re not thinking about turning and starting on your way there now, kid.” He scolded her. “You won’t make it by nightfall! Youngsters should remember your lessons and not tempt fate. Just last month a kid nearly got himself poisoned to death. Stepped right on a Nido, barely made it out.”

Despite herself, Honey feels her eyes widen. That sounds fairly scary. It’s not that she thinks pokemon are harmless. Litten and those birds already showed her. But the part of her that’d grown up with pokemon being safe and fainting in games and anime… that part has just gotten a shock.

“I know, I know…” She ends up mumbling. “Is there any place I can sleep in town, then?”

Turns out there is one single place, besides getting a room with a local. Twinleaf is out of the way and not known for… well, Honey’s not sure what it is known for or not known for. What are rural places known for, usually? Food? Tourism? Twinleaf can’t be too turistic if it only has one inn. Or maybe that is turistic, for Sinnoh.

Armed with directions, Honey sets off more calmly to Twinleaf proper. She takes notes of the kind of pokemon she finds on the way, pokedex in hand. The local wildlife seems to be mostly Starly and Bidoofs, as she expected. She also catches sight of a single Psiduck, gone before she can point the pokedex at it, and the tracks and pellet-shaped excrements of what the database tells her are likely from either Nidoran or their evolution. Human-owned, she sees Buneary, Ponyta, Mareep, a single Tauros and a whole bunch of Doduos. (Eheh, ostriches.)

With more and more human presence in the environment, the danger of having a random encounter fades from her mind and Honey takes her time going over her pokedex and the HMs she has. The pokedex is complete, and she reads through Litten and his evolutions. As a rule, and like most normal cats, the Litten line is slow to trust, generally aggressive and prone to picking fights. Mostly Normal and Fire moves, a physical fighter. Cares to take with a mostly carnivorous pokemon, been there, done that… It’s a bit baffling that Litten isn’t compatible with any HM (not a single one out of all the eleven).

“Not even Cut. I don’t buy it. I can probably teach you. Who’s a good kitty who wants to learn how to murder trees?” She teases the pokeball in her hand, then stops. “You wouldn’t happen to know what degree of talking to animals and objects is considered sane in a world with pokemon, would you?”

The pokeball doesn’t answer.

“Right. Well.” She sighs. Twinleaf is within sight. The road widens and turns into actual pavement. She’s already crossed a couple of people along the way. “Time to find a place to stay for the night… and not break my wallet.”

---

Spoiler

Welcome to semi-realistic pokemonster world! Also, why do 10yo have so much freedom?

 

The world rocked in time with the clip-clop of hoofbeats on stone and the creaking of wet wood. A slow, unforgiving sway that sent her neck lulling from one side to the other. A deep, dark fog covered her vision. It was foggy, like the tenth floor.

Sleep-crusted eyes struggled to open. As she wet her lips, she tasted salt. Everything felt so quick, and Ais felt so very slow. She was hurt, she realized with distant alarm. Her stomach roiled unpleasantly. Her head throbbed, her body was more than just sore. Her hands felt cold and numb as well. She closed her eyes shut, trying to gather strength to shake herself.

“Hey, you. You’re finally awake.” An unfamiliar voice. A blond human, rough and ragged, dried blood on the side of his face. He sat in front of her.

Snow-covered trees swayed behind him. Gravity pulled her to the side. They were moving downhill? “Where?” Her voice came out a gravel-like whisper. She coughed.

The man looked somewhere to her right. There was another human sitting next to him, even more ragged but less bloody. “You were trying to cross the border, right?” She had? “Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there.”

Thief? She blinked. The fog was dissipating more and more each second. The dark-haired man, weasel-faced, had his hands tied in front of him with rope. So did the blonde. Ais looked down as the thief started ranting, words lost to the wind. Her arms too were bound, not just at the wrists. Coils of rope dug into her forearms, violent knots in several places. The lack of feeling in her purplish hands hit her like a monster rex, and adrenaline surged through her veins.

Ais Wallenstein was finally awake, and she had no clue what was happening.

Where was everybody? She tested her bonds, once. Where was her armor? Twice. Where was Desperate? Then at full strength. What sort of item was this rope? She questioned herself with a ragged huff.

“You there.” The thief’s voice called over, and she looked up from the length rope she had just noticed between her ankles. “You and me — we shouldn’t be here. It’s these Stormcloaks the Empire wants.”

Stormcloaks? The Empire?

The blonde man, a warrior she noticed now, scoffed. “We’re all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief.”

Ais tried to remember Riveria’s geography lessons, the — only to be violently interrupted. “Shut up back there!” Boomed a voice from her left. A soldier, armed and armored in unfamiliar equipment.

No, maybe Rakia? But does anybody call Rakia an Empire?

That thought flew through the active mind of a first-class adventurer as she cataloged everything in front of her. Several soldiers, some of different rank? Two carts with prisoners, Ais on the second, pulled by horses down some sort of mountain road? The trees, like she’d never seen, the violent nip of cold weather, tall, incredible mountains surrounding the sky like teeth.

Eyes on her, wary. Hands resting on the pommels of swords. Ais was a threat, and these men and women knew so.

A chuckle from the warrior called her attention back to him. “I saw you. Made these Imperials regret trying to stop you… Got outnumbered eventually, but you fought like a true Nord.”

“Like a daedra worshiper. Crazy.” The thief avoided her eyes.

Ais felt something heavy settle in her stomach. Her memories were fleeting and confused, her head throbbing still. But her bruises and cuts told a story of their own. Had that black flame been unleashed upon these soldiers?

“And what’s wrong with him?” The thief continued talking, jittery.

Ais listened. Her attention was still divided by the unwelcome feeling of maybe-regret gnawing at her, but she still caught the rising tension as the man next to her was revealed. Kings, names, rebellions. Nothing seemed to make sense.

“Last thoughts?” She asked quietly and the warrior gave her a bitter smile. The thief was mumbling to himself, paleness visible even under his layers of grime. The maybe-king spared her no more than one look she couldn’t understand.

Wait—

“General Tullius, sir! The headsman is waiting!” She heard clearly from the front.

The cart was turning round a great boulder, and beyond it there were the stone walls of a small fortified city. Not bigger than an average-sized house in Orario, in stone and thatched roof. The first cart was already close to the open gates. More soldiers.

Ais tried clenching her fists, to very limited success. She had almost no feeling in her hands. Her eyes glued to the approaching walls. The thief was muttering prayers. She recognized no names. She didn’t know how she had ended up in this situation, but she knew she had to escape it.

And yet, she couldn’t muster strength in her legs to rise. Her breath came out shaky and irregular. She had faced monsters, alone, wounded… but she'd never felt weak like this. What is going on? What did they do to me?

The walls cast a shadow over them as they crossed into the town.

Calm down. Breathe. Like Riveria had taught Ais. She could control that. Beat back the nausea.

"Look at him, General Tullius the Military Governor." The warrior had twisted so he was looking over his back, and he kept talking as struggled to keep the rider in his view without unseating himself. "And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn elves."

Ais straightened with hope and looked over the man's shoulders. The cart's rocking made it difficult, but she saw four people on horses. A severe human with gray hair and beaten, red and gold armor. With him, three tall figures in robes and golden armor, adorned graceful curves and points. She strained her neck, trying to see the elves. The woman in front turned to look at their cart and Ais felt ice enter her heart.

They didn’t look like any elves she knew. Beautiful, but different. Their skin was gold-tinted, like paint, and the shape of their eyes was all wrong, like the people that came from the Far East. Two golden eyes, the same color as her own, met hers for a second. It was like meeting Hildrsleif’s for the first time. Power, arrogance, pure dismissal, and a great anger radiated from the woman.

A house blocked her view of them, and the impact of wooden wheels on uneven ground sent her crashing back down into her seat. Her breath was knocked out of her and the nausea surged. Ais struggled to keep herself from being sick, guts and head rattling like she’d been hit. Oh– concussion. She realized.

Voices from the townspeople and the soldiers, the prayers the thief was still uttering to himself, the noise rose around her like a wave, threatening to engulf her. Weak. When was the last time Ais had felt this completely and utterly powerless? A grounding touch. The warrior had leaned forward and grasped her numb hand. He spoke slowly and clearly, and Ais focussed on his words alone.

“This is Helgen. I used to be sweet on a girl from here. Wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in.” She met his eyes and gave him a thankful nod. He didn’t smile, but his eyes crinkled. Around them, the soldiers became louder and the cart slowed down. The thief questioned it, fearful, and the warrior answered both of them. “Why do you think? End of the line.”

No.

“We need to run.” She said.

The warrior shook his head, and there was acceptance in his eyes. “The gods are already waiting for us.” Something softened in his expression as he looked at Ais however, and he gave her hand one last squeeze before rising. “It will be okay.”

But– The thief was complaining loudly. “No! wait! we’re not rebels!” and the warrior admonished him with a shove that nearly sent him sprawling. “Face your death with some courage, thief.”

“Loki is waiting for me.” Ais’ words went unheard amidst the commotion, the thief’s platitudes and ever more panicked screeching. “Everybody is waiting, in Orario.”

Cold metal rapped against her arm. A soldier scowled at Ais from the ground, sword unsheathed. “Move it. Don’t make me get in there.” He rapped the flat of his blade on the cart’s border, dangerously close to her skin. His point was clear.

Out of ideas, out of choices, Ais gingerly got up. The bindings around her arms made moving awkward, and the cord between her ankles wouldn’t let her take full steps. She scoped out the area as she moved carefully.

It wasn’t hopeful. A main tower overlooked a courtyard of packed dirt, where the weapon racks had been stripped clean. Two large braisiers were being lit, illuminating the large black and red banners depicting a stylized dragon. Tall walls surrounded them but to one side, where they’d come from, the paved road curving around the stone and thatch roof houses of the town. People, all humans, gathered there, curious, held back by a line of soldiers.

Ais swallowed. I should be able to jump these walls– I should… And yet, she eyed her feet, to hop down from the cart to the ground, and when she tried, her strength failed. Her knees hit the rocks first, a spike of pain running up the rest of her just before the rest of her body crashed to the ground.

Between squinted eyes and gritted teeth, Ais saw everybody’s attention turn to her. Opportunity created, the thief bolted.

“You’re not going to kill me!” He laughed, running pell-mell up the road.

“Archers!” Ais heard, followed by the pull of bowstrings. Not a moment later, the thief fell, pierced by three arrows. “Anyone else feel like running?” An officer bellowed. No way out. Large hands on her shoulders forced her to stand. Ais pulled against them, to no effect.

Why? Something is missing. No, that’s impossible. Right?

“Wait. You there.” The soldier that had been taking names, and writing on a parchment, pointed at her. “Who are you?”

A light shove had her shuffle forward. She glared through her bangs at the soldier behind her. Unafraid, he scowled back. Tsk. Ais wasn’t used to people reacting like this. It was strange. Many times she’d wished everybody wouldn’t treat her as the The Sword Princess. Now, that respect and distance would be a godsend.

“Ais Wallenstein.” She introduced herself. “Loki Familia.”

Only confusion met her declaration. The soldier looked at this papers, then back at her. “Right. From…?”

Am I in a… really faraway place? “Orario.”

Still, no recognition crossed the soldier’s face. Or his superior, standing next to him with an impatient scowl. “Which province is that in?”

Ais couldn’t find words. They don’t know about Orario. But everybody in the world knew about Orario. The Labyrinth City, the Fortress Encircling the Dungeon. Where am I?

“How old are you?” The soldier asked, frowning, and Ais answered in a daze. The soldier only frowned harder. “Captain. What should we do? She’s not on the list.”

“Forget the list. She goes to the block.” The Captain, dark-skinned like an Amazon, interrupted him before he could say anything else. “Stop staring at a pretty face. That’s not a child.”

“...By your orders, Captain.” He nodded and marked something down on his parchment. “I’m sorry. I’ll– Well. Maybe you’ll have some luck. Follow the Captain, prisoner.”

---

Spoiler

this scene should end with alduin's entrance, i got impatient
ever notice how people cross into danmachi but not from danmachi? well imma punt characters into other places and they will like it (not)
boy, ais is not easy to write, i need to reread the manga
also ahah i had to start with hey you youre finally awake

 

.3

A piece of paper that would be found in a skeevy motel room if I hadn’t burned it (with a lighter stolen from a skeevier shop by dastardly, thieving flies):
~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~
STEP ONE: SKITTER - all the bugs ✔

STEP TWO: everybody else
-new wave. find addresses.
-prt : missy biron, dennis red hair, chris, carlos, browbeat not yet, dean gallant rich boy find by victoria. colin wallis, the shadow bitch, hannah (immigrant, lives on base?), nephew? of mayor christner, evil snake man thomas calvert
-DINAH ALCOTT !!
-travelers not here yet. Boston? <-research
-e88: max anders, theo anders, kayden russel, twin blondes maybe cousins to kaiser. All others by association. Public identity to hookwolf maybe.
-azbb: ??? bug recon???
-undersd: lisa wilborn??/sarah livsey rachel lindt, brian laborn and aisha, jean paul vassil
-merchants unknown and hard to find.
-uber leet. Tech?
-FAULTlinie. Palanquin club, easy pickings.

Priorities
Tattletale -> immunity
Panacea: heal/buff biotinker !better bugs! moar powah
Faultline-liza
tattletales for power immunity
Newt: knockout
Aegis: brute MANPOWER! Electricfield brute!^^^
dinah/coil: precog
Stalker or Grue: stranger
Kaiser- offensive options
NewWave all in one buffet flying shields lazers and lightsabers

OTHER FCUKING SHIT
Check tinker tech. Check remains oooo goodie grave robbing! Also, marquis, butcher, other groups.
~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~


Heard on the street at the same as a facepalm:
<”Fucking Parian! Duh, oh my god, why dude, why. Motherfff-grrr…”>


Random internet searches by yours truly at the local library:
“Are phonebooks still a thing”
“Where can I buy bees?”
“endbringer bug out bag essentials”
“Brockton bay tourist advice”
“Anime 2011”
“Medhall contacts”
“How to recognize gang members brocton bay”
“Cornell university”
“Authentic parahuman fight souvenirs”
“Could dragon be a dragon”
“Night hours with least people”
“Wasp extermination services Brockton Bay”
“New Wave Official”
“How much blood can ticks take”
“Cape tourism a thing is?”
“Earth aleph differences internet”
“Apartment rent brockton bay”
“Famous graves capes"
“top 10 rock bands”

---

Spoiler

look, it was written, might as well

 

Spoiler: edits

22.07.2022 switched images, correction of orthographic errors, some tiny edits

---

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 0.0

This feels like a really weird dream. And it was a dream. A lucid dream, maybe, but definitely a dream. Everything was fuzzy around the edges, and wobbly.

Wee! They spun in place. Nothing but rocks, covered in a strange green fog, surrounded them. What a boring dream… They wandered around, exploring. The air was ominous, but monotonous. There was always just another boulder around the previous boulder. Just more dark green fog. Sometimes some sparks. A growl from behind. A growl from behind? With a strangled chuckle they looked over their shoulder. Out of the fog, shapes began to emerge. Many-limbed, many-eyed, chitinous insectoids.

“Oh shit.” They bolted. The dream was now a chase. There have been many dreams like this before. Something primal from the days of cavemen, when man was prey and not predator. Run, went the instincts, run!

Chase dreams always ended in one of two places: something woke them up and they forgot. Or they tripped. Down they went, like clockwork. Their breath squeezed between their ribs, their legs unresponsive because of some stupid dream logic. I hate sleep paralysis. I hate it so much. Breathing exercises, just got to manage to inhale, oh my god, I feel like I’m going to die and on top of this the nightmare? Fuuuc-

​

Wait-

​

What- This is new. But familiar. …I’ve been playing too much Warframe. It didn’t matter. If there was a choice, like it appeared, then they could choose none other than the lightning-bringer himself.

Suddenly, they could breathe again. A surge of energy rushed through them, pure adrenaline. With a yell, they dropped down to the ground. A wordless interjection of shock came from their face. They stared at their fingers. Touched a helmet that did not have a mouth. Everything moved so well. No pains or aches. They felt awesome.

Chittering and screeches broke through. All around, smoking carcasses were dissolving. The dream had transformed, but it was still a chase. And if they had anything to say about it, they were no longer prey. They shadow boxed through basic stances. The responsive nature of the dream did not disappoint. Still: “No weapons?”

​

“Oh. Hm. Great!” This dream was shaping up. “Rifle, stealth secondary aaand… staff.”

The weapons materialized on them. They noticed the heads-up display for the first time. Then there was no more time to think as a multi-limbed creature shot out from the fog. In an instant they had the Braton up against their shoulder and firing. A hail of bullets ripped through the thing and it dropped, dead. They released the trigger, shocked at the noise.

That had been instinctive, and so were the next minutes, spent running and shooting. Rolling awkwardly but more confidently each time, reloading with movements they shouldn’t be familiar with. Yet every time they became faster as they got used to the weight and recoil. Still dismayingly slow by Tenno standards, a true rookie… but at the top for a regular human being.

It was… FUN! Ahahah! Whoo! Hey, how do I bullet-jump!? No time to stop and figure it out. Every time a blow managed to find them, there went a chunk of their shields.

Then the bullets ran out. Armored hands went automatically to their leg holsters and knives flew… with questionable precision. The moves were worthy of a space-ninja, but the space-ninja wasn’t quite worthy of the moves.

They eyed the steadily decreasing number at the corner of their vision. Kunai weren’t infinite either. But they weren’t limited to game mechanics, they discovered with glee as they used the last little blade left in their hand to stab the eyes out of another creepy-crawly. Half their secondary ammunition gone, they grabbed the staff slung magnetically across their back. Attacking was fairly simple and the reach was nothing to scoff at.

They let instincts guide them for another couple of moves, instead of using what little bojutsu they knew, as they thought about their options. No stance mods I’m betting. No mods at all, duh. Still haven’t used abilities… only two shots tho. I need them to back up. Heavy slam. How do I heavy attack anyway– doesn’t matter. Up we go AND—

They slammed down from a jump staff first. The ground erupted in blue-white fissures and all the monsters went flying, suspended in the air for precious seconds. Seconds they used to crouch, aim their course as well as they could, and launch themselves into the air.

Dreams are weird. They thought as they pushed muscles they didn’t have in directions that shouldn’t and re-impulsioned themselves. Double jump. Steel fingers gripped rock like the machines they were and they scrambled up the huge boulder they had chosen with seemingly uncharacteristic clumsiness.

But the higher-ground didn’t offer many good news. The sky, if there was one, was obscured by the sick green and black cousins of the auroras borealis. Everywhere they looked, nothing but desolate rocks, noxious mists, spike-shaped rocks and monsters running through the fog. Everywhere but in one direction. A craggy hill rose in the distance. Crudely carved steps climbed one of its sides, lined with menacing stalagmites, and on the top shinned a white-golden light.

If there was an objective, it surely looked like that. As they squinted, they managed to mark it on with a waypoint.

“If that’s not a sign…” Wasting no more time, they jumped. Skip and hop, they jumped from boulder to boulder like a child crossing a stream. If they fell however, they would have to fight monsters. All in all, not too distant from what a child experienced when exploring the woods.

A great leap took them from the last rock on their path to the stone steps. The hill rose above them higher than it looked from a distance. Behind them, monsters were already scrambling up. The whole place was coming down on them. There better be a solution up there! The warframe sprinted up the steps. Now used to the movement of Volt, they wished their second ability was unlocked, but alas. Instead, they chanced to throw a hand behind them with fury, hoping that their dream-instincts wouldn’t steer them wrong for the first time.

Bolts of lightning sprang from their palm and smashed into the enemies.

YES!

The top was almost within reach and they saw the light waver like a mirage. A human figure became distinguishable, burning golden and reaching out for them.

They stopped. Chest heaving with breaths they didn’t need to take, they locked eyes with the woman. Eyes? This was not the Lotus. Who was this? They looked over their shoulder. “No time for twenty questions.” Dreams hated indecisiveness. They stepped forward and took their arm.

​

They did not wake up.

---

​

Spoiler

EDIT: WHY YES I HAVE BEEN HAVING FUN WITH CAPTURA AND FREE NOT!PHOTOSHOP
actually have been wanting to write one of these for a very long time, but for some reason i insisted on having images... are the neutral pronouns annoying?
Very much inspired by Manuke na FPS Player ga Isekai e Ochita Baai (When a Stupid FPS Player Falls to Another World). Took me a while to decide on warframe. mostly because i've been pushing warframe in dragon age SIs around in my head for years. ... look, playing warframe is a power fantasy rush for a filthy casual like me ok. and dragon age makes me mad ok.

 

Spoiler: edits

22.07.2022 switched images, minor edits to errors

---

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.0

It was just like jumping into water. A shock of cold, a weightless feeling and the stinging of water in their eyes. Water from the plains of Cetus, because the warframe’s systems shorted out. Shields: disrupted. What little energy was left: gone. HUD: wack.

And trapped inside, all she could think was This is becoming a little bit too real.

Now, it felt like she was awake, rather than the self she dreamt they were. And it was cold, after a fashion. The warframe fell into snow, phantom pins and needles erupting across her nonexistent skin as it flailed around for a bit before power cut off and it slumped, inert. Backup biological systems activated and the frame took its first breath, a minuscule intake of oxygen more than enough to keep the essentials alive for long, long years.

Weightless, she floated in the same space as the frame. She couldn’t see herself. Warframe really had something of a third-person shooter element to it, her awareness of her surroundings somehow including what was happening behind her. It made sense, given that most warframes didn’t appear to have eyes at all.

She didn’t even have time to consider whether she should transfer to operator form. Am I the Operator?

Shouts and the clanking of armor approached. Several men in frankly medieval outfits surrounded the warframe. Shields raised, spears and swords pointed at her warframe. Her first instinct was to recoil. Not going out of my cozy war platform, no siree! But as they gradually gained courage and started poking at them, she realized that staying still was the best she could do. She highly doubted regular swords could do much to a warframe’s sword-steel skin… unless they decided they really wanted to destroy it.

Please just think I’m a weird statue… in this weird… bombed out… ruins of a… church? Are those giant crystals? Those are giant glowing crystals. Oh just where am I?

The bandits going ‘demon this’ and ‘magic that’ around weren’t helping. It wasn’t quite ‘Tenno Skoom!’ but not an unfamiliar sentiment to anybody who played Warframe. At the very least, they weren’t picking up axes and trying to chop her for parts like Alad V, so she gues— and there came several men and women in much fancier armor. Smoke encrusted, dirty and banged up plate armor, but definitely ornamented armor. These people were in charge, and they appeared to be discussing what to do with her.

Stopping several paces away, a scowling woman with dried blood running down her face shouted for everybody to get back. She braced herself. A light shot from the woman’s sword and struck the warframe like the hammer of god.

–Wait. That didn’t hurt?

Opening the eyes she had metaphorically closed, she examined herself. Nothing had happened, not that she’d noticed. Well, her warframe now seemed truly dead. It wasn’t, she felt it was still there, but all systems were down. Even the HUD that had been flickering in the periphery of her not-vision was gone. Her limbs felt like real lead, which she was not strong enough to lift.

The only difference was that her left hand was sparking madly, sending spasms up the warframe’s arm. If she paid attention to it, she could feel its echoes. But that applied to anything she paid attention to if the warframe should be feeling it.

Guess they knocked me out, -ish.

She felt more vulnerable with the warframe in that state, but at least now the real fantasy people around her seemed more relaxed. That could give her an opportunity to slip out later. For now, nothing was safer than the unreachable, if boring, inside of a tortured eldritch biomech.

She was not lucky enough to be completely ignored. Instead, after some poking and a few aborted attempts to lift the warframe’s dead weight, the soldiers procured some rope and dragged them away. Well, first they rolled them into a makeshift stretcher and then they dragged them, but they were treated as a piece of luggage nonetheless.

Watch it! If you scuff my paint job I’ll… hm. You might be doing me a favor actually. She loved Volt, but its default colors weren’t great.

They formed a small procession as they dragged Volt, and her by extension, out of the ruins and into even more desolate ruins. She stared at the destruction. She’d been thrown into its epicenter, which meant that nothing had remained of whatever and whoever lived there. Just bare rock, evil magic crystals and piles of bricks. Past the blackened walls that still remained standing, the damage was less instantly lethal, and much more horrifyingly survivable.

For a few agonizing minutes, and a given definition of survivable.

Some people had gone straight to Pompei. They wouldn’t ever leave. Others left only shadows in the ground, and bits and pieces of themselves here and there. Snow was falling, lightly but with a green tinge. She looked up, past the spiky edges of the crater the remains of the cathedral were in.

Oh. Fuck.

There was a rend in the fabric of space–time, high up in the sky. The same green tonality of that dream she’d been in cast its otherworldly light on the landscape. As she looked, through the warframe’s sensors, she saw arcs of not-lightning and something like a malformed bird detach from it. That’s not good. It explained why everybody was on edge. Monsters from another world. From that perspective, doesn’t a Warframe also count?

To her amateur eyes, the green wasn’t quite right for it to be a Void Storm. It also begged the entire question of the Void. A Tenno would be… mostly fine, with the Void, unlike these normal humans. She just wasn’t sure she was a Tenno, and she wasn’t in a position to test it. If she had been exposed to the Void, she should be insane. Of course, if she was insane, she wouldn’t know. That’s the thing about insanity.

So far, she thought her actions and reactions aligned fairly well with morals and logic, and so did those of the humans around her. If she was insane, or they were insane, she would have noticed. Surely.

Well, at least it wasn’t the Infestation. Helminth is a good boy and not dangerous, Helminth is a good boy and not dangerous, nopety-dopety! Please. Just, please. Let’s stop thinking about the big things before they actually appear!

She turned her attention back to their surroundings. Should be information-gathering, not wool-gathering. She was high and deep into a mountain range, and apparently had been thrown into some sort of monastery in the wake of a catastrophe. There were many sorts of monks and nuns in red and white robes running around, and a big number of injured she’d bet were pilgrims. An exceedingly large number of armed security forces from around the same time period were also in attendance. A great many of them carried the same symbol or variations of it.

Paladins? Urgh, I hope they’re not like the Tem– wait, did you just say Templar? Hey, pay attention to the ghost here buddy! Templars, like… come on. Could this get any wo– no. Don’t do it. Don’t jinx yourself.

People also spoke in heavily accented English, something she hadn’t taken as strange before. But now she also heard what sounded like French from another woman and maybe Italian?

The current topic of discussion was Volt. Or rather, herself. It seemed to have made the rounds that the strange maybe-demon had come from the breach. More, as a brave soul examined her. It was still alive. It’s alive!! And that the mark on their hand was connected to the hole in the sky, bursting into bright sparks when there was movement from the heavens. Apparently, it looked quite painful, sending uncontrolled jerks through the warframe’s chassis, making muscles contract. To her, it was merely a natural reaction to a current.

I’ve disconnected tho, so I don’t feel any of it. Don’t worry. Oh, you aren’t worried, you just want to lynch me. Oh, so you are worried… because you want to torture information I don’t have out of me first! That tracks.

So she got a front row seat to her own imprisonment. A rare opportunity.

And then, propped against the wall, chained up in the basement of a church, under constant watch from four different guards, she got bored. It wasn’t like she could do anything, locked as she was in a recovering warframe. She wasn’t going to attempt leaving the warframe with four twitchy knights just waiting for her.

Not that there weren’t a few interesting moments. First of all, when they noticed her Kunai holsters still had a few knives in them. The soldiers had picked up the Braton and the Bo, fallen to the ground in the wake of the magnetic proc, back in the destroyed cathedral, and those weapons were somewhere in the church above. She was glad the Braton was out of ammo, but wondered what they would make of the Bo’s moving parts. The problem with the Kunai was that they were either magnetically or mechanically attached to the holster, and simply put regular humans did not possess enough strength to get them out.

Then they tried to remove the holsters themselves. A smart move in any other situation. Those holsters were a part of Volt now, literally.

It also led to the confirmation that she was in a fantasy world. They called in what they called a ‘qunari’. Tall, burly, horned, and very much not human. From the way they spoke with him, he was a different race altogether, and there were also mentions of dwarves. She recalled then that she had seen shorter, stout people around.

The qunari also failed, so they stuffed their holsters with straw and tied some cloth around them. Inventive, but problematic.

And there were elves! Not the fun anime elves, no. From the way you talk, mister, and they talk to you, there’s a whole lot of racism. Typical.

After enough hours had passed, and after several attempts to wake the warframe, via percussion and water buckets, they had decided to physically examine Volt. Hurray for the scientific method? It was still a bit disgusting and disturbing to see a grown man run their hands all over them, but the third person view they had taken and the disconnect from their senses made it tolerable. And after seeing Adan become increasingly more confused and disturbed by warframe xenobiology, hilarious.

Volt looked like it had a massive something between their legs. It was just aesthetics. Mostly. If one didn’t think too much about where warframes came from.

Naturally, when interrogated by the surly paladin woman from before, the man could only explain with bafflement that all of Volt’s armor was a part of him. A bit like an insect, or even a qunari’s horns. Yes, even the bracers, the helmet, the pauldron and the skirt. Those were all part of the demon. If that thing was a demon.

The rogue accompanying the paladin suggested a possessed statue of some sort, since they could barely nick it with their weapons. As much as they dared for fear of waking them. So they called in the apostate, which was a type of mage. I need a thesaurus with all this old english. If anybody would be an expert in demons and spirits, apparently it would be this bald man. He certainly spoke like a learned man. She liked his scholarly hermit vibe.

A shame, for them, that he also didn’t know exactly what they were. Apparently not a demon or a spirit, but perhaps something from ‘the Fade’, because ‘the Fade’ still held innumerable mysteries. What was of greater import was that the ‘mark’ on Volt’s left hand was expanding proportionally to the Breach, now capitalized. It should be killing them, but they couldn’t tell for sure.

From her part, she couldn’t tell that at all. If she carefully brought her attention back to the warframe, she could tell, with some doubt, that the fibers in the left hand felt off. The surges that wracked it from time to time didn’t interact with her or the warframe’s more complex systems at all. Nevertheless, she was understandably concerned when they mentioned that the Breach wasn’t slowing at all. If anything, it was accelerating, opening smaller space-time anomalies in the vicinity and reportedly, beyond.

“Pray to your Maker that your prisoner wakes up soon then, Seeker. He is your only clue to what happened at the Conclave and, if my theories are correct, our only hope to stop the Breach from engulfing the world.”

That… changes the priority of things a bit…

---

Spoiler

look sometimes the brain worm just doesn't leave and this time the brain worm was like: well what if nothing actually happens and also don't you hate writing dialogues? ocp is going to be fun tho, eventually

 

Spoiler: edits

25.07.2022 several minor edits, some minor changes in the confrontation with Cassandra

---

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.1

I thought this was a dream. Maybe it’s a dream within a dream. My own second dream. Or maybe, I’m wide awake.

Every hour that passed was another hour the world lost. More breaches. More demons. More dead. And it seemed to be accelerating.

It was not her fault, no matter how everybody glared at the warframe she shared an otherspace with. She might be needed to resolve it however, as befitting of a Tenno, an isekai or whatever. She believed everybody had at least a bit of responsibility for the world around them and she wasn’t heartless enough to reject the responsibility placed upon her by virtue of being in a certain place at a certain time, wrong or right. People’s lives depended on it.

Even if those people were religious fanatics from several centuries back and therefore could really use some divine smithing full of irony.

That’s maybe not unfair, but unkind. Bet half these peasants don’t know how to read. Save the righteous anger for after the end of the world is averted, girl. Even … urgh, certain distasteful groups are useful when fighting a war for survival.

Unfortunately for everybody, her warframe’s systems were not cooperating. It was worrying; she didn’t know if this would be a common state of affairs, she wasn’t even entirely sure the warframe would reawaken by itself or at all. And it was very boring. Nothing to do but stare at the same old dungeon walls and scowling knights for hours on end. Nothing to stop her anxieties from spiking then withering on the vine, leaving her with nothing but sour feelings.

She’d even tried to transfer herself through reality as Tenno should be able to do, half a day before when the guards had seemed particularly sleepy, but found it impossible. If she was a Tenno, she wasn’t a very good one. Or maybe she wasn’t using Transference at all. An even scarier possibility.

She was stuck, had worked herself through a couple of purely mental panic attacks, and at some point started dissociating.

When the Templar shift changed, the chatter was it’d been two days already. There was a storm outside, and despair was starting to grip people.

Something changed. In the darkness of the cell, the warframe’s light emitters blinked into life, a deep orange light that started out weak before the life within made them shine with ominous glow. And she felt herself settle into the warframe as systems slowly initiated after a long, long pause. The chassis felt heavy and creaky, like an old statue it had been taken for, but blood pumped through channels, fluids moved, interlinked organs restarted their functions, circuitry reacted and the rust fell away.

I… I think I could cry. No, I am crying.

As the neuroptics came online, the HUD bloomed into existence, all of its pieces clicking into their rightful places. Top left, radar. Top right, health, shields. Bottom right, energy, abilities, ammo. Bottom left, comms. Dead center, kill zone.

Alright, she thought as she flexed Volt’s fingers, let’s see what I got. No energy. Health is a bit damaged, shields are booting up… A faint shimmer ran across their form as the shields regenerated. Good. And I still have two handfuls of kunai… huh, ‘obstructed’. Well, guess I know Orokin now. Somehow.

When she looked up, swords had been unsheathed and stances taken. She considered what to do. Perhaps a jaunty Gentlemen! or a casual Yo. would relax them… or maybe it would just make them even more wary. She considered waving. Hm, no, sudden movements are probably not a good idea. It was very much like an armed standoff. Well, an armed police against minority suspect standoff. Great, is ACAB applicable here? Please don’t be.

Her ears (Volt’s audio sensors?) caught the sure and angry steps of somebody in armor on the upper floor, then coming down the stairs. She didn’t have to wait much longer for the door to bang and the angry paladin to come through. Seeker Cassandra. Behind her, the woman sometimes called Nightingale, with the name of Leliana. Apparently a nun? Brown and blue eyes roved over Volt’s sitting form, meeting the glowing orange openings in its helmet as if they were eyes.

She tilted their head, deciding not to speak for now. Volt doesn’t have a mouth, after all.

The rogue slunk in behind the warrior, disappearing into the shadows for anybody without biomechanical sensors.

Cassandra’s frown deepened after long moments of tense silence and she almost spat as she spoke, hand clenched tightly on the pommel of her sword. “Tell me what you are and what you were doing at the conclave, and I might not kill you right here.”

She couldn’t help the frown at the warrior’s tone. Volt’s head dipped just slightly. The temptation to stick her metaphorical tongue out was there.

“Are you capable of speech?” The rogue’s more calm voice was a stark counterpoint.

She bit off the Sure can, lady. that she wanted to throw in their faces. Like a normal person, she did not appreciate being threatened. Instead, she simply said “Yes.” What came out was vaguely similar to her voice, through the warframe’s lenses there was none of that annoying high pitched tone discovered when she heard recordings of her own voice. Instead, it sounded exactly like her mental voice, intonation and all.

The humans startled heavily, some cursing out loud. But after a brief widening of her eyes, Cassandra surged forward, banging her fists on the bars that separated the cell she was in from the rest of the dungeon. “Answer us! The Conclave is destroyed, everybody dead! And you, right in the middle of it. What did you do?”

Okay, one, fuck off. Two, fuck you. “What did I do? What did you do?”

“What did–”

“I was just minding my business when I got dragged into this frozen hellhole of a place. So the question is what did you humans do, huh, that blew a hole between realities and dropped my ass here!?” The stress and anxiety she’d been keeping at bay finally manifested. In one fluid movement, she had gotten up and was now looking down at the paladin. She could see the orange lights of her optics reflected in her brown eyes.

Before she could back down from her overly aggressive posture, the Seeker matched her in tone, grabbing the warframe’s left wrist pulling it, or attempting to, up. “Well then, explain this!”

Wow, she’s fearless. She realized. The guards had their swords pointed at her again, and even the rogue had moved, perhaps to grab some concealed weapon, but Cassandra had barely twitched. She’d reached into the cell containing what was, for all they knew, an extremely dangerous animal. She’d tensed and kept the warrior from moving her, and a warframe’s strength should have given her pause, but no. It didn’t seem to matter to the woman at all. Or she’s too pissed to give a fuck.

“It’s connected to the Breach, our mages confirmed it. You are lying, creature.” She hissed.

Again with the dehumanization, lovely. “I didn’t have that on the other side, lady.” She snorted. “So, once again, you tell me. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the ones who put it there, following my kidnapping and wrongful imprisonment.” She gestured at the bars with her head.

“So you are from the Fade?” Leliana interjected before Cassandra could have a conniption. Clearly the good cop of this duo. Psychological technique or not, it wouldn’t hurt to answer and be a bit more cooperative. Maybe they would even start taking a softer, much more welcome approach.

“No. I’m… hm.” She paused, wondering exactly what she should say. A truth, because liars were always caught sooner or later. But how to word it… and really, what was the truth, when even she wasn’t sure of what was happening? “I’m from… Terra,” she used her native language to add a spice of otherness to the name, “and the Void. They… might be from beyond your Fade. I’m not sure of the metaphysical coordinates in relation to this reality.”

“The Void?” Cassandra repeated in a strange tone, and her grip on the warframe’s wrist tightened. At least two of the guards whispered some sort of protective prayer.

Perhaps void had a special connotation for these people. When doesn’t the frigging VOID have a connotation? Still, it was the truth of the Tenno. "It’s what we call it." She shrugged exaggeratedly.

"And what does that make you?"

"A Tenno." For all intents, purposes, and roleplay. "We're human-adjacent, if that makes it easier to understand. Started out human, still consider ourselves humans of some sort…" She explained when their faces made it clear how not-easy it was for them.

It certainly kickstarted something in their brains, because a ripple of unease ran across these humans.

“Human? That–?” A guard whispered too loudly.

She tilted her head, but managed not to snap anything that would reveal her as separate from the warframe. “Yes, bloody human.” And it wasn’t even wrong, from an etiological point of view.

They tensed.

Leliana approached from her position in the edges of the room. She had been constantly on the move, prowling, psychologically exerting pressure on the prisoner by introducing an element of uncertainty. It had a minimal effect on an ancient war machine that outmassed her by an order of magnitude and could see in the dark. She exchanged a loaded look with Cassandra, communicating with the kind of ease that only people that know each other extensively well have.

The paladin scoffed and released Volt. She took a couple of steps back and crossed her arms over her breastplate, a deep scowl on her face. Still, she let Leliana take the lead.

“You must understand,” she started, in a radically different mood from her compatriot, “you have appeared at the center of the greatest tragedy of our time, armed and essentially… untouched. We had to be careful and assume the worst. Moreover, the Tenno are unknown to us and you resemble on some levels the demons of the Fade.”

“Oh, I do. I don’t have to like it though… Surely, you understand.” The sarcasm was heavy in her voice.

Leliana was unruffled. If anything, she seemed pleased. “Of course. I am Sister Leliana, Left Hand of the Divine. I’m afraid I do not know your name…”

It was an invitation, but one she had expected from the very beginning, trapped in the warframe. And in her boredom, she had actually thought up a decent alias that was not her name or username. A homage as well. “Ren. Volt Ren, currently.”

“Volt Ren.” Leliana nodded. It took every single ounce of willpower she had for Ren to not break down laughing right then and there. “What do you remember happening? We might have a better idea of what happened if you could share your perspective.”

Well, weren’t they being accommodating… “I doubt it’ll help you, but sure. I remember I was dreaming. That was very clear to me. I was fighting monsters I wasn’t familiar with, insectoids of some sort, and then I noticed a light in the distance. I approached, a woman made out of fire reached out for me. She didn’t seem hostile so I accepted, and suddenly I was falling here.”

“The soldiers reported a woman in the rift behind you.” Cassandra piped up.

That was interesting, she noted. “Likely the same person, or th—”

A crackle of green light interrupted them. Ren looked down to see the mark on Volt’s hand raging, sparks flashing and creating deep shadows in the dungeon. Her hand twitched, just once, before she brought it under control, mechanical and purposeful. It took some concentration, but the fibers of Volt’s muscles obeyed her above the external stimuli.

She looked up to see the entire room staring at her in apprehension. She tilted her head in question.

The paladin shook her head and reached for her colleague’s arm. “The mark is growing. Leliana, we can’t waste time here.”

“You’re right.” Leliana sighed and gestured at one of the guards, the one that had the keys to her cell.

“Head to the forward camp. I’ll bring… it to the rift.” She raised a hand to forestall any objection. “I can handle it.”

“If you’re going to use neutral pronouns, I’d prefer they/them. If not, pick a gender and use it.” Ren snarked from where she was busy unobstructing her secondary’s holsters. The chains around her wrists were getting annoying, so she tested them once, then broke them with a little bit of effort. Not like I was expecting ferrite and high-tech carbon alloys, but still, good for me. She set to liberating her ankles as well, and deliberately ignored how swords were pointing in her direction again. “Oh, and by the way, I want my weapons back.”

---

Spoiler

actually had this written the whole week end, images were the ones missing.
hmm, gonna change the previous ones too, to give tenno text! i am not that funny of a person
also, stupidly immensely proud of not redoing the initial dialogue like most self inserts, geez
ahah, everybody thinks we are an abomination from the abyss (da hell)! in the house! and technically they are not wrong

 

Spoiler: edits

10.08.2022 several minor edits to missing words and punctuation

---

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.2

Paraphrasing the following fifteen minutes: Of course I want them back, they’re mine. Yes, now. You don’t trust me? Boo-hoo, I don’t trust you. Look, the Braton can stay, but I’m not leaving this place without the Bo. The polearm, ya’know? What do you think I need it for, it’s a staff, you use it to whack people with it ‘til they drop.

Truthfully, it came down to a simple thing. Ren wasn’t helping them without a bare minimum of compromise. And if people were dying… she buried her guilt under anger. She was a person too, and their treatment of her hadn’t endeared them to her at all. They must understand, you see? Asking for a simple, blunt melee weapon was her price. They were the ones that were acting like denying her such a simple thing was worth people’s lives.

So, in the end, after ten minutes arguing, in which at least one person tried to push the warframe... (Something exponentially harder to do when said warframe was actively resisting.) Surprisingly, Cassandra was the voice of reason. Perhaps it was simply in her nature to not dawdle and just get down to business. Regardless, Ren appreciated it and so wasted none of her time.

She twirled the Bo once, nodded, then clamped it to its own holster, another partly mechanic, partly magnetic notch on Volt’s back that was barely visible at all.

And so, Ren as Volt, walked under their own power out of the church and beheld the Breach.

“Oh, fuck. That does not look good.”

To call it a breach was a severe understatement. Whereas before it had seemed like a light in the sky between parted clouds, occasionally sending eldritch lightning out, it had grown into a veritable storm. It looked like the eye of a hurricane as seen from space, but they were on the ground, a thing straight out of science-fiction and fantasy art. Green light almost overwrote the natural sunlight, what little made it out through the heavy cloud cover, and flashes lit up the storm like lightning. At night, it must have been ever more nightmarish. Rocks were suspended hundreds of meters in the air, rotating slowly, along with energy in the form of plasma and fire, a deadly green whirlpool in the sky.

In the vague shape of a lightning bolt, a rent in the fabric of space originated from it, down to the ground. It shone the same neon green, a solid mirage-like in quality to it, even to the warframe’s sensors.

“It grows with every passing moment, and it is not the only such rift, merely the largest.” Cassandra said, next to them. She and two other soldiers in light armor were escorting Ren. “We must move.”

The natives formed a triangle around her and move they did, Cassandra taking a spot at the front with her. She gripped Volt’s arm firmly and directed them through the path. Although there was strength, it was not forceful. Ren could see why she was doing it and for once, was thankful. I suppose I can cut her some slack, she doesn’t seem to be a bad person after all. As long as Cassandra appeared to be leading a prisoner, the dozens of refugees in the immediate vicinity would probably not attack, panic, run or do anything similarly unwise. And I’d really not have to fight these poor souls…

She’d seen some damage when Volt had been towed in, but the following days had only made it worse. What might once have been a small town or village had turned into a half refugee camp, half military camp. Streets, houses and hastily constructed structures were overflowing with the wounded, the lost, and those taking care of them. Standing right next to them, pikes and arrows were being made, swords sharpened, armors repaired. Broken things and rubble abounded, sickness and blood in the air. Ren felt almost like the scent of gunpowder was missing. If somebody wasn’t tending to the wounded, they were working, carrying supplies, weapons, messages… or staring brokenly into space. There was no shortage of help needed for any task, yet everybody stopped and turned to look as they passed.

I was already expecting the hate… but the sheer amount of fear, welps.

Cassandra was silent as we walked through the throngs of people, but upon approaching the gates, closed and armed, spears pointed outwards, she spoke up. “The people mourn our Most Holy, Divine Justinia. They need–”

“A scapegoat?”

Ren wasn’t sure if the expression translated but it was english they were speaking, and indeed Cassandra understood. “Someone or something to blame, yes. The Conclave was a chance for peace between mages and templars, an end to the war ravaging the land. The Most Holy brought their leaders together. She was the only one who could have. Now, they are all dead.”

Somebody double-tapped peace and left it dead in the gutter. Yikes. “Well, that’s just about the worse that could happen.” Not only Cassandra but the rest of her escorts made noises and expressions of agreement. “Both sides are going to point fingers at the other and renew the fighting extra-hard. Who was winning, by the way?”

“Nobody.” Cassandra said in a way that encompassed much more than either mages or templars. She raised one arm to the soldiers manning the gates.

Arcane magic against holy magic, she could see that tying and causing great destruction to everybody in the vicinity. If it even works that way here. “I’m not surprised. Do you– Well, you basically said I was your only suspect, but besides me: do you have any idea who could have destroyed the Conclave?”

“None. Or rather, Leliana has too many. The Conclave hosted many factions interested in the discussions. Peace, what kind of peace, the new relationship between templars and mages… everybody wanted to know, and to influence those decisions if they could.” She scowled. “One way or the other.”

By then, the group was walking through the gate. Cassandra stopped holding Volt’s arm. A stone bridge extended for about fifty or sixty paces, another gatehouse at the end of it. There were nothing more than light wounded here, only soldiers ready to join the fight, or return to it. This group was visually and verbally more aggressive. Once more, it would scare Ren, if she wasn’t currently towering over every single human present.

She’d noticed it before, in the church. Volt was tall enough to almost hit the ceiling of the dungeon, and she’d had to hunch to avoid scraping the top of their helmet when they were leaving through the narrow stairwell that led to the ground floor. She hadn’t thought much of it. She’d been to medieval castles before. Many passages were small even for five foot tall people, which made it rather funny to watch when the six foot plus tourists had to almost crouch. But Cassandra hadn’t had that problem, had she? And even the big double doors of the gatehouses and the church looked smaller than they should be.

Wait, is Volt actually… really tall? The only people with size parity seemed to be the qunari race, and they were so rare that she’d only seem two so far.

A resounding boom in the distance and a prickly feeling in their arm made her look up at the breach. It was currently spewing out meteors. Big and small, rocks enveloped by eldritch energy used the kinetic energy imparted into them to crash into the landscape. If Volt could gape at the sight, they would be doing so. “It’s… meteors.” She managed.

“It does that.” Cassandra almost grumbled.

Oo. Kayy. She waited until they were past the second gatehouse, and too many prying ears, to ask something that had been nagging her. “By the way, couldn’t help but overhear, but what is an abomination?”

Behind them, one of the soldiers tripped. Cassandra shot a look at Volt’s faceplate that told her just how stupid she thought that question was, but it quickly passed and she shook her head with a sigh that almost visibly expressed her tiredness and frustration.

One of the soldiers, a blonde woman with noticeable eye-bags even beneath the dirt and grime of battle. “Beg pardon… si-sire?” She seemed to be trying to be polite, and suddenly realizing she didn’t know why she was being polite. “An abomination is when a demon possesses a mage or… another person. It… warps their body and… yes.”

You didn’t have to be very intelligent to realize what the natives thought Volt was. And from the name itself, what they thought should be done to such things.

Holy… “Huh. Hm. I see.” Isn’t that… a bit too accurate!? Tenno are essentially children with void-thing ghost-like powers possessing warframes, which were people. Sort of. Needless to say, this was a comparison she was not going to admit to any time soon.

“The rift is not far. This way, through the valley.” Cassandra started up a jog through the snow-covered path that led vaguely in the direction of the Breach.

They, that is to say Leliana, had explained that they needed to test whether or not the mark would be able to seal the original rift in the sky by trying it on one of the smaller off-shots that had sprung up. This was information Ren had been able to mostly put together. After all, she’d been awake and listening when the elf mage expert had started theorizing. Still, she’d appreciated the details and transparency, even if she had no clue how she was going to seal a space rift. She didn’t have operator mode available after all.

The mountains surrounding the valley path seemed to amplify all sounds. The crackling of still burning wood, screams, and the irregular, unceasing thunder from the breach. It wasn’t just Ren’s mind playing tricks on her. Cassandra herself commented that the mark was reacting faster every time. Every group of soldiers they passed was a little more bloody than the last and they all reacted with fear at seeing her.

“Andraste protect us!” “Maker, the demon!”

Only Seeker Cassandra, scowling and leading the charge with an even more unyielding fire in her eyes, kept them from being accosted. Ren kept being impressed with her. She wasn’t exactly her type… but she was slowly being reminded, even in this dire situation, how she favored the fairer sex.

And since Cassandra was going in front, she was the one in danger when, crossing a bridge, one of the Breach’s meteors decided to fall right on top of them. One blast of green and rock missed the bridge by scant meters. Urgency compelled Ren to start really running. Not even a warframe, especially an unmodded one, would survive a direct hit from one of those. There was a flash of green and she just reacted, throwing herself at the paladin and tackling her out of the way as stone crumpled beneath them.

The sound was deafening. She felt the warframe’s filter’s engaging, cutting out the majority of it from overloading her senses, and letting the screams of those soldiers not fast enough be heard. If Ren could still feel her heart, she was sure it would be beating out of her chest. Instead, she pushed herself off Cassandra with hands that didn’t shake and tried to assess the damage.

Oh thank fuck, looks like it missed most people. She and Cassandra were stuck on one side of the bridge along with some soldiers. One of their lesser escorts was on the other side and the other two had fallen among the rubble that the bridge had become, along with a few other soldiers. And several, she noted, were not moving. Or missing parts entirely. Shouldn’t I be smelling… oh, right, warframe. Ehe… why doesn’t this nauseate me? Is it the filters? Is it me?

By any definition, Ren wasn’t a soldier, or accustomed to violence.

This, even filtered by the lenses of a true war machine, no longer bound and helpless in a coffin of her own, was brutal.

“Demons!” There was no time for self-reflection on the battlefield. From the remains of the fade-borne rock, more still careening in their direction from the sky, creatures unfolded themselves into realspace. Ugly, mismatched things, in ragged robes and hoods, blue-black leather skin clinging to disproportionate muscles. The same sort of little insectoid creatures she had been surrounded by in the other side chittered at their heels like hounds.

Beside her, Cassandra unsheathed her sword and was directing the troops to shoot even as she looked for solid enough footing to descend into the main battlefield.

Ren didn’t have those limitations. “Leave it to me!” In one move, she’d drawn her staff and literally sprung into the fray.

She landed staff point-first into the body of the closest demon, piercing it nearly through. She kicked it off her weapon and spun, sweeping the Bo like a golf club and nailing a smaller demon. The bo twirled in her hands like she’d been born with it. A strike finished off the first demon, crushing its head. Then she was on top of the demons harassing a lone soldier. Each blow struck with decisive force, crippling if not outright killing.

However, the demons weren’t pushovers. Their claws were as tough as metal, backed by inhuman strength and uncanny movements just not-human enough to throw combatants off. They rent through armor even as their flesh resisted the blades of mortals in ways that didn’t make complete sense. To Volt, a hit just meant losing a big part of their shields, already somewhat alarming. To the humans surrounding Ren, it meant traumatic injury at best. It further constrained her, leaving her to use the Bo’s longer range to keep two or three of the demons away from the soldiers who had fallen at the bridge.

Those further away she could barely help, reduced to distracting with a well-placed kunai when she could. And those who fought their own battles, many succeeded as those who didn’t.

The skirmish seemed to take forever, and was over before Ren had had time to process. As much as she was combat-capable, tracking several enemies and overseeing the battlefield, never hindering Volt’s reactions, Ren herself was stuck as if she had dropped from holding a controller and slicing through Grineer to… standing ankle deep in their blood and organs.

And so they stood, in a body that was breathing a little, over half-dissipated demon corpses and the injured. Ah, I leveled up. Uh. Fuck. She twirled her staff and re-slung it. Forced herself to move, because she didn’t have adrenaline and so this was all purely mental shock. Volt’s shields had come down one time, but she had not been hit before they regenerated. As such, the warframe’s state was as before.

Cassandra, who had joined the fight halfway through and flanked the demons, ending said fight, gave her one thoughtful look amidst a grateful nod.

Ren shrugged. Instead, she took stock of everybody else: it did not look good. Three were dead and another was on his way; Volt wasn’t trusting medieval surgery to fix that hole. Both their escorts were among the dead. Of the soldiers that had also been present on the bridge, none looked to be anywhere but moderately injured or worse. Truthfully, only Cassandra had escaped with her armor in one piece.

Ren wasn’t sure what to do. It wasn’t like she could just leave them here… This would be a perfect opportunity to just… abscond. Think about the meaning of life. Leave possibly thousands to die…

The Seeker made the decision for her. “We must continue.” She said, as darkly resolute as ever.

“Alone?” Ren asked, then thought it was a stupid question. She amended herself even as she started walking after the paladin. “Are they going to be okay?”

“They will be, if you can close the Breach.” She narrowed her eyes as she mentally calculated the path, and gestured with her hand for the unknown spirit to follow her through the frozen river. “We have done what we can here. And I left them a few of my own potions.”

“Oh, ok.” Ren looked up from where she’d been marveling at the warframe’s perfect traction on ice– Funky shield applications? –as something the paladin had said registered. “Wait, wait– potions? You guys have actual potions?”

“Of course…” Cassandra frowned minutely as she seemed to think it over.

“Healing potions that heal you?”

“Yes…” The paladin met her eyes with a look that was less severe than usual and mayhaps even curious. “Do… Tenno not have potions and tonics? Elixirs?”

Ren opened her mouth, a motion that was wasted with a warframe, closed it then raised one finger. “We have stuff that works the same way… but you don’t have to drink it. And then we have, hm, medicine, which works… differently.” Meshing both real world and unreal world facts was making it confusing. It didn’t help that she had very little idea about the levels of medical care available in the solar system when it came to non-warframes. People certainly survived with… varying levels of augmentation and ‘reposition’.

Actually, can I check my gear wheel, do I have a– oh. There it is. Compleeetely empty, figures.

As Ren started having thoughts about her equipment, Cassandra spoke up. “Back on the bridge... thank you.” She kept her gaze forward even as the warframe’s head snapped in her direction. “You didn’t have to do that. And personally as well, for getting me out of danger.”

She tapped down a sudden urge to shake the woman next to her and instead managed a deep sigh, whistling strangely from the warframe’s chest. “Of course I had to. I’m not fucking heartless.”

“... Regardless.”

They continued on in silence, but the tension had eased a little bit.

---

Spoiler

boy, has life been... a thing. switched out all old images in the previous parts. this one was actually cooperating very nicely... until my whole pc lost the battery and that had to be fixed...
in the meanwhile, boi! volt's dropping hideously alarming bits of lore for thedas natives! imho 'bloody' must mean something way darker in a place where blood magic is feared that much ahah
also, going with an estimate for warframe lore heights that puts the average warframe at 2m+. because i like it that way. war machines be war machines. necramechs should indeed be mech-sized.

 

4.

I started with Panacea. This because I did a few rough calculations. On a napkin. Based on maybe-respectable semi-scientific sources. A relatively light person has something like 4 to 5 liters of blood, which are around 10% of their body weight, of which I can only take 15% of that volume without noticeable side-effects. Taylor was hooked up to an IV in the hospital, she was a different story.

Well, anyway, that’s 1,5% of a person, so 1,5% of a power, sorta. Also, something like 60 to 75 milliliters. I’d used a 2 ounce, -ounze?- bottle I’d bought for the express purpose of, well, taking the right amount of teenager blood, at the hospital. Which was just about that.

A normal tick, flea, fly or otherwise can drink up to around a milliliter. Less than one. And only when given entire days to work. Quick napkin math: that’s on average 0,25% of a person-slash-power per bug on a good day.

Could I use several bugs? Obviously. Was it going to be suspicious? Eh, maybe? Did I want to eat more bugs than strictly necessary? No.

But throw a little Queen Shaper their way and things became oh so much easier.

My first hurdle: New Wave lives in an upper-middle class white suburbia zone. Loitering around past sundown, to secretly collect the blood of superheroes, like a bum or a reporter, was just not going to be disregarded (without even suspecting the vampire bit). If I was New Wave or their neighbors, even seeing an unknown car parked in the street would be suspicious. And I had to get to the girl while she was asleep. She’d know something was up with my insects if she was awake.

So during the day I scooped out the streets around their house. Identified the manhole cover with most space underneath that was also out of sight of cameras (very common) and, well, dry.

We’re still in the beginning of January. Survival isn’t glamorous.

And then I didn’t have money to buy the supplies I needed so I aggressively napped through the day, took hilarious amounts of coffee around eleven at night and finally robbed a supermarket.

I’m kidding, it turns out that, like people with two brain cells to rub together, supermarkets take the cash out of the till after they close and put it in safes.

No, I looked up Alan Barnes in the phonebook, walked there at 2AM and then used bugs to swipe all the cash in his wallet. It was easy. So easy in fact that I repeated the process in a couple of random rich-looking houses per street. On a smaller scale.

Nobody really notices if they have one less banknote. You probably miscounted it or misplaced it or whatever. In the meanwhile, Alan from over yonder got pickpocketed, the sucker.

And then I slept the whole morning away. So, in the afternoon of the second day of the Quest for Biokinesis, I got myself a better backpack, food supplies, overalls and gloves, a set of tools to lift drain covers. Plus noseplugs and earplugs.

On the second night I went into the blasted place, regretted many things, ate bugs, cried.

On the third day, I did not raise myself from the dead.

No, I spent it inside a hole in the ground because the window of opportunity to get in and out of the sewers is unsurprisingly small. I had to wait until it was 2AM again. Only then did I drag myself to the nearest gas station to buy vodka, chocolate and incense sticks.

Look, a lot of times I make stupid decisions and do stupid shit. I've gotten the post-stupid pity party down to a science.

---

Spoiler

why yes, tomorrow i have a thesis presentation for which i am hilariously unprepared. in fact, as you can see, i yeeted my self-insert into the sewers because of it.

 

The cry of an unfamiliar bird shocked awake the guests at a little room in a sleepy town. Four heads jumped up in alarm, hands moving to weapons before they inevitably got tangled in bedsheets or hit the bed frames. In Tiona’s case, she rolled all the way out of the bed, and belly-flopped all the way from the top bunk. The other three girls shared a collective wince.

“Argh! I hate how this hurts!” Tiona complained as she got up, nursing a bloody nose and a split lip, new bruises to join the collection.

“That looks bad.” Her sister frowned, poking around the swollen nose. “You need to be more careful, you know things are really different for us right now.”

“I knhoww~” Tiona whined.

“Maybe we should ask Ms. Gilda if she has a potion for us to use, just this once.” Lefiya suggested, sitting on her spot on the bottom bunk across from Tione. “We don’t want to make a bad impression today.” Although, really, it wasn’t like there was anybody in town who didn’t know Tiona (and Tione, often) was always covered in bruises from her recklessness.

Tiona lit up. “Oh yeah, we’re getting our partners today! Finally! I can’t wait!”

Tione was more moderate, but her own excitement manifested with frustration. “If it weren’t for those damn thieves… They’ll pay when I get my hands on them.”

The girls got ready. Their backpacks and such had already been prepared. Their journey was supposed to have started a few days ago, before the professor had been robbed. So it was just a matter of putting on their new clothing and going down the stairs to get breakfast.

“Good morning girls!” Their host, Ms. Gilda, a cheery if a bit absent-minded woman, was already at the counter preparing breakfast for the hungry legion that was the stomach of four fit and active teenagers. Lefiya hurried to help her, the only person anybody trusted around sharp implements, much less the rest of the kitchen. “Oh dear! What happened to your nose!”

It turned out that yes, Ms. Gilda did have a potion in the medicine cupboard.

“So girls, today is finally the big day.” Over rice, fish and vegetables, she asked the girls that had been staying under her roof for the last two months. “Are you excited to finally get a partner and start your journey? I remember my brother was bouncing in excitement when it was his turn.”

Three affirmatives (with more or less good manners) answered her.

“I’m glad.” Then, not wanting to leave their last member out of the conversation, but hesitating a bit, she asked the person that had remained stubbornly in silence until now. “What about you, Ais?”

The golden-haired girl paused in her chewing, looking up to see four pairs of eyes trying not to stare at her with concern. She avoided their gazes. She didn’t want to lie but…“I guess. Thanks for the meal.” She got up and took

Her friends watched her leave, dishenhearted. “Oh dear.” Ms. Gilda sighed. “That girl… Her Pokephobia hasn’t been getting better at all, has it.” It wasn’t a question.

“Well…” Lefiya chuckled awkwardly. “It’s not… as bad as before.”
“It’s not much better anyway.” Tione rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I never thought Ais would be this type of stubborn.”
“Getting a partner pokemon will help.” Tiona crossed her arms, huffing. “If Ais fights alongside a pokemon, hm… their feelings will break through, yeah!”
“I’m not sure if that’s how it works…”
“Well, being all alone like this is not helping at all.” Tiona countered Lefiya.

It was the truth. As far as Ais was concerned, the last syllable of pokemon stood for monster, and no argument could change her mind. Two months since they’d crashed through space-time, and Ais’ progress regarding the creatures that inhabited this world had gotten stuck at ‘not looking for an angle of attack’ every time she saw a pokemon.

Unwilling or unable to connect to the world around her, her attitude was isolating her and it worried her friends. Unfortunately, they couldn’t make Ais talk about it if she didn’t want to, so they were stuck.

Professor Elm, who’d been more than helpful and kind in not only helping them find their bearings in a new world, separated from everything they knew… but had also dedicated a good portion of his time to figuring out a way home for all of them, had proposed they leave New Bark and explore the rest of Johto.

It was culturally expected of preteens to take the pokemon they had grown up with and start exploring the surroundings of their hometown. Within a few years, many went backpacking through the region, a journey of both external and internal discovery, until they returned home or settled elsewhere and started learning whatever profession they wanted. But those that aspired to be trainers almost universally took on the Pokemon League and journeyed to challenge the gyms of Johto or Kanto.

All that sort of details that only Lefiya knew or cared about. It was basically a tournament.

Traveling and fighting while they figured things out, while aiming to be the strongest? The twins had already gone on a similar journey out of their homeland. They were not at all opposed. In fact, it sounded perfect!

Lefiya saw the benefits of going on a pokemon journey. She too had left her home forest to travel and learn about the outside world. In the meanwhile, she could help the professor with both his researches, all while she learned about everything!

And Ais? Ais was going to tag along and hopefully… something inside her heart would change.

---

Spoiler

i told you i was gonna punt people from danmachi out. guess who's been playing pokemon again too.
the girl squad (tiona tione ais and lefiya) are my favorites. going with a friendly semi-anime pokeworld to further cognitive dissonance ais. how fun!
oh yeah, and no falna. minuseven houserule: away from danmachi world the blessing gets locked. prevents cheating gods.

 

Three plucky girls and one unplucky girl reported to the front door of New Bark’s own Professor Elm. A large two-storey building

Tiona didn’t waste any time and prepared to burst in– Tione grabbed her before she could and politely knocked instead. Nobody answered. Tione took a deep breath, but it seemed little in the face of her fuming. If the professor had gotten distracted by his microscope again, today of all days… She raised her fist to knock one last time. Lefiya’s ears twitched and she suddenly scrambled to grab her arm.

Professor Elm opened the door. “Oh, excuse me girls, I was just… ah, Tione?” He blinked at the fist that had stopped halfway to his nose, held back by a pale elf.

The Amazon, who had not heard him as she usually would, squeaked. “Nothing, sorry!”

Brushing away that little hiccup, he ushered them in, giving Ais, sour-faced and looking at her own feet, his best smile. Sentret chirped at his feet. No answer. The professor and his partner traded sad looks.

“Alright!” He clapped his hands and led them into the center of his workspace. “So, after that horrible incident, I contacted professor Oak from the Kanto region. And since fortunately the thieves left behind one pokemon, it was easy enough for the professor to send us one of his starter trios. We managed to get the cross-region transfer system to stabilize, somehow, last night. So we have exactly four pokemon for you, and they’re all different to boot!”

Originally, Elm had managed to secure two trios of the pokemon traditionally bred in Johto for promising trainer apprentices. But someone, or a group even, had broken into the lab, severely injured the guard Suduwoodo, and taken five of the six pokeballs in the exhibition stand. The police suspected a single assailant.

“They’ve all been raised from egg to be great around humans, and professor Oak and I already explained to them that you're not used to pokemon. They, hm, also know about Ms. Wallenstein’s situation…” He rubbed the back of his head, somewhat embarrassed. “Anyway, all of them are ready for you. Are you girls ready?”

“Yeah! Come one, show us what they all look like! We’ve been waiting for weeks!” Tiona burst out, eyes shining. “I agree, enough with the suspense.” Her sister was also smiling, eyeing the four pokeballs on the table.

“Okay, okay, just a moment! Give us just a bit of space, perfect.” He started releasing the pokemon.

A small blue reptile appeared in an angry beam of red light. Standing on his back feet, red spines ran down his back and he sported a yellow v-shaped marking on his chest. “First, this is Totodile. He’s the one that was left while the others were taken.” The crocodilian growled at that, and they all felt his displeasure. Elm smiled sadly. “Usually our Totodiles are playful by nature but it seems he’s taking the theft of his brother and sister to heart.”

Totodile snapped his jaws and glared at the four girls.

“Don’t worry, we understand.” Tiona slung an arm over Tione’s shoulder and pulled herself closer to her sister, who huffed but let out a smile. “Tione and I are sisters too, and I’d beat up anyone who hurt her.”

“Oh please, as if anybody could hurt me.” Said Tione. “I’m more likely to go around beating people up because you don’t take anything they say seriously.”

“Would not.” “Would too!”

Before the situation could escalate, Lefiya intervened, forcefully loud. “What about! The pokemon from Kanto!? Professor! I’m sorry…” She finished in a whisper.

Sweatdropping, the man grabbed another pokeball. “Right, so from Kanto.”

This time, a turtle shell came out. After a second, an eye peered at them and the rest of the turtle popped out, chirping happily. “Squirtle. He’s a water-type just like Totodile. Squirtles are very good at defense, obviously, but they can also gain incredible offensive power if trained right.” The turtle, only a bit shorter than its counterpart, turned big brown towards the girls. He was almost hopping in place with the excitement, rising on his hindlegs. “He volunteered to come all the way to Johto. He really wants to go on an adventure.”

“The grass-type I was going to give you was Chikorita, but instead we have Bulbasaur. A reliable pokemon with an even temperament.” Elm freed another pokemon from a ball. A green-shaded toad-like pokemon appeared, sporting a huge bulb on its back. “This girl is a bit older than the others. None of the other Bulbasaur wanted to come, but she’s apparently very curious.” A small vine-like appendage detached from the bulb to wave at them.

Lefiya waved back a little. “Hi.”

“And finally, we have our fire-type.” A lizard-like pokemon was released, orange with a cream underbelly. A live flame danced at the tip of his tail, wavering happily and raising the temperature in the room a degree. “Charmander. They are a very popular choice, since they can evolve into dragon-like Charizard. See the way the fire on his tail is burning? That means he’s happy to meet you.” The lizard chirped, wagging his tail.

Four humans faced four pokemon.

Between them, the only actual human in the room cleared his throat. “So, pick the one you want to be your partner. Ah! And please don’t fight about which one…” The very prospect seemed to tire him.

The Lefiya, Tione and Tiona discreetly glanced towards Ais. The golden-haired girl had taken a step back somewhen in the past five minutes. If the way she was scowling at the sole fire-type, they could take a guess.

The twins shared a look. “Well, since there are two water pokemon, Tiona and I will have them.” “What Tione said! They wouldn’t do well with Ais anyway, considering she can’t swim…”

The girl in question seemed to choke on air. Lefiya sweatdropped at the amazons’ blunt methods. And it wasn’t like it was untrue… Lefiya flashed back to the terrifying moments of two months ago, just after landing in New Bark’s lake. The fear when all three of them had surfaced, knowing something was wrong, and found Ais hadn’t swum up. Thank the Gods the sisters were such great swimmers. The water-types truly fit them.

Tiona bent down to grin at Squirtle. “You seem my type. Let’s go on an adventure?” The turtle barked, and hugged her knee. “Squrr!”

Tione walked up to Totodile, meeting his serious eyes. “How about it? I promise we’ll keep an eye out for whoever stole your friends.” The serious pokemon snapped his jaw and waddled the rest of the way to sit at her feet. “Di.”

Lefiya opened her mouth to offer Ais the last choice, only for Ais herself to walk up and point to Bulbasaur. “That one.” Then she turned on her heel.

And left.

Silence reigned after the last of Ais’ golden hairs had rounded the corner. The professor wrung his hands. “Oh dear.” And Tiona crossed her arms with puffed out cheeks while Tione shook her head slowly. The rest of the pokemon seemed similarly lost, but none more than Bulbasaur. She took a tiny step forward, looking confused. “Bu-ba?”

Lefiya hurried to kneel beside her and gave her head a few pets. “I’m so sorry about that. Ms. Ais is… she’s the one that the professors told you about. She’s…” The elf struggled to express the feelings of her friend, mostly because she herself didn’t understand them. “We come from a place with actual, very scary monsters. And Ms. Ais fought them for a long time so she hates monsters.”

“Bu.” The pokemon was downcast.

“No, no, she doesn’t hate you.” Tiona spoke up. “Nobody could hate a cute thing like you.”

“Ais is just… clinging to the views of the past. She can’t let go.” Tione spoke with finality, and a bit of personal perspective. She looked down at the Bulbasaur. “We’re counting on you to shake her out of it.”

Meeting the gaze of all three girls solidified something for Bulbasaur. She nodded, sad eyes returning to the door Ais had disappeared to.

“You won’t be alone.” Lefiya promised, before turning to Charmander and extending a hand for him to smell. “So you and I will be partners then. I used to have a fire spell, so I’ll be a good trainer for you.” The lizard pokemon sniffed at her fingers and seemed to accept her. “Chrr.”

Professor Elm sighed deeply. “Goodness, I think that went as well as it could have been. I suppose she’s not going to want to nickname her pokemon…” His head shot up as he remembered something. “Oh, a couple of things! First, since Tione and Tiona want to participate in the Pokemon League, I registered you as professional pokemon trainers. Your trainer cards are a bit different than Lefiya or Ms. Wallenstein.”

He passed them four laminated trainer cards. Lefiya took both hers and Ais.Indeed, the twins’ had different borders and a little more information on the back.

“I also placed an order for a couple of official badge cases. They should be waiting for you under your name at Cherrygrove’s Pokemon Center, in the next town. Be sure to pass byyy—”

“Wow, really, you didn’t have to!” Tiona thanked him with a rib-cracking hug.

“It was nothing! Please, let go!” The man wheezed. Amazon strength was truly something. He coughed as Tione bonked her sister over the head and made her apologize. “Besides– besides that. Professor Oak also included a little something extra in his package, and this morning I took the time to reconfigure it to Johto standards.”

With a smile, he grabbed something from a desk nearby and held it up. A red metal book-like device shone in the light.

Lefiya’s eyes lit up. “Is that–!”

Elm smiled. “That’s right. A Pokemon encyclopedia. This is the latest pokedex version, straight from Professor Oak’s own labs!” He himself was excited.

The elf had to stop herself from grabbing it. “The inventor of the pokedex actually gave it to you, professor?”

The man’s smile widened and he laughed. “To me? No. I already have my own, and it wouldn’t do me any good, sitting in the lab as I do most days anyway. He gave it to you.” He held it out to her.

The girl received the advanced piece of technology with almost trembling hands. “Me?”

“I’ve already registered you as the owner. I know I should have asked before, but in an official capacity–” The professor straightened and cleared his throat. “Ms. Viridis, would you be willing to assist in my research and to contribute your own field findings as my assistant?” It would just be more of the same work and reading she was already doing for him, in the end. Reliable trainers were often sources, part-time assistants or full-blown researchers on their own rights.

Lefiya nodded frantically, speechless. Tears had gathered in her eyes at the trust she was being given. Tiona helped her close her hands around the pokedex. “Lefiya agrees a lot. We’ll help out on your research thing too.”

“Every bit we can help is a step towards home. We haven’t forgotten.” Her sister piped up, a bittersweet smile on her face.

“But of course!” The human sincerely placed his hand over his chest. “I also promised to help you girls get home.

It would be a long, long journey. So long they didn’t even have an inkling of its length. But the first steps were being taken right there in New Bark Town.

---

Spoiler

wadda'ya think of everybody's starters? no worries, ais ... ah who am i kidding, her character arc still has a waaay to go.
undecided on nicknames, and the plot of this is still so very barebones, brrr. it's set before the events of RBY tho, so that gives me stuff to play around.

 

Spoiler: chronological notes

because this is a snippet thread and this thing is flowing out into my mind absolutely not in order, also, revised estimates for their stay in New Bark lowered to 1 month. no, the other snippets haven't been corrected, the timeline is still in flux

---

Squad Goals x1:The Fight

The day was winding down to a close. After the twin’s impromptu, but highly anticipated sparring match, they had spent the rest of the time calmly hiking through the trail. The Hiryute had wanted to fight a few wild pokemon that had wandered closer to the path, but for once Lefiya had put her foot down and absolutely forbidden them from fighting anything for the rest of the day. It had been an eventful first day.

Now they set up camp. Lefiya was in charge of preparing everybody’s food while the twins had the hard labor: digging a fire pit, mounting their tent (a contraption similar enough to what they were used to). Ais was trusted to forage for firewood, and berries (if she found any).

She found herself in a patch of woodland. The setting sun stained the leaves pink and brown. She located a good, appropriate-sized branch. A few test swings made it clear how different it felt to use, not just from Desperate, but from any other sword. Even the Little Blades she had used in her youth didn’t feel this cumbersome. It wasn’t because it was a regular bit of wood, having trained with and even fought with vaguely sword-shaped objects when the situation required it.

Without Loki’s blessing, Ais was not the Sword Princess, no longer that fearsome adventurer. Just Ais. Just a girl.

It made a whirlwind of emotions rise inside her belly, so many she couldn’t count and they choked her at the throat. All but one, right now. Her frown returned, but this time determination was clear in her gaze. She hated it.

“AAAHHH!” The treetops rustled with wingbeats as things fled the area.

She’d swung down with all her might. No rush of wind, just the feel of a moderately fast object cutting through air.

Again, again again, she swung.

Until the beat in her blood matched her heart and not her head. Her arms burned with exertion. One month without training. She flowed into the forms she had been taught, testing them out. Nobody had let her even touch a blade after those disastrous first days. Desperate locked up somewhere in that town. Unable to sneak out and have her early morning practice.

If there was one good thing about leaving on this journey, it was that they would be able to begin training again. Tiona and Tione were right about that.

A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead. Her harsh breathing filled the space between trees. A familiar calm and peace settled over her shoulders, and Ais lowered her sword. She was so very out of shape.

They hadn’t come look for her yet, she considered as her breathing regularized. Maybe, she’d still have time for one last thing.

Fighting not to scowl, she opened the pack she’d settled against a tree and took out the red and white sphere that was the bane of her thoughts. Ms. Gilda’s stylized green sticker was set carefully on the red part. She thumbed the button that kept the monster inside.

“Tch.”

Fine. They wanted Ais to work with a monster? She could do that.

Wordlessly, she released the creature out in the open, clutching the pokeball with unsteady hands. The thing, the Bulbabsaur, materialized from shining light. It looked like a green, smaller Frog Shooter. With two eyes and a plant growing on its back. And a different behavior.

It looked at her with, dare she say, curious eyes.

Ais raised her practice weapon and settled in a guard position. “...You’re my… partner now. So you’ll help me?”

“Buu…” It gave a small step forward.

“You saw Tiona and Tione, this morning. They’re strong, they fight. I was strong… I will be strong again.” Her hands tightened their grip on the branch until her knuckles were white. “So come on. Fight me. Attack me.”

The creature trembled and shook its head.

Why? Why wouldn’t it act like it should? Did it think Ais was weak? Was it mocking her?

“Come on. Attack! Scratch! Tackle!”

It took a step back.

Ais felt her teeth grind together, splinters digging into the palm of her hands. “Do it! You… you stupid frog! If you don’t…” She couldn’t. She wasn’t going to prove– she’d promised she wouldn’t.

The edges of her vision were blurry with sweat. She blinked. “Bu-basaur…” It was looking at her like— How dare it. How dare it look at her with eyes like that!

And finally, it frowned. No, its eyes narrowed. Its body lowered close to the ground. Ais knew these signs. Countless battles had taught her to read the movements of her opponents, and there weren’t any foes she had hunted, fought and slayed more than monsters. Just Frog Shooters, hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands.

The monster unfurled two vines like whips from its back. A ranged attack. That too like a frog shooter. She had to prepare and deflect the first, dodge the second– dodge both– then attack before it could retract them. Her entire world contracted, seconds stretching under her focus.

There! A vine flew, so fast! And Ais, tired, found herself unable to respond in time. She watched in dismay, but inner triumph, as her sword missed the monster’s attack and it hit her—

It flew past her.

A bright light engulfed the pokemon before retreating, taking with it the Bulbasaur. Ais blinked. Almost dreading what she would find, she turned and looked. The pokeball she had discarded behind her after releasing the creature sat alone on the ground. It had aimed for the button on its centerline, knowing it would pull it back in.

It refused to fight her.

The branch fell from limp hands. The sweat that stung at her eyes mingled with something she didn’t want to name. “AH!” With a yell, she kicked the sphere away, sending it rolling weakly across the grass.

It didn’t make her feel any better.

---

Spoiler

getting into Ais' head. these bits are always a bit difficult because the SO manga's translation hasn't reached this part yet and I haven't read this in either of the light novel series yet, though, i'm afraid that's what's next after i finish SO4.
Ais is very much in denial, trying to justify, refusing to acknowledge certain things. needless to be said, she's going on a journey because Tiona put down her foot after she sent Lefiya crying. she's feeling guilty enough about that so she promises ok. her isolationism and distancing are also blinding her to the stuff that the other were going through, which will come up.
and desperate... well, i'm still unceratin, but NO ONE was going to let her keep it, especially not after she threatened the lives of several pokemon with it. due to its emotional importance, it's being held safely until she i quote: calms the fuck down.

 

5.

I’ve never taken a bite out of a person, obviously. I’m not that kind of cannibal. (…yet?) But Panacea’s power 100% tasted like people. I was expecting it to taste a bit more of DNA, somehow. Maybe because all she ever does is use it on humans, it tasted of people. Yes, the whole lot of a person, including the nasty intestinal bits. Or maybe that was the sewer trying to seduce me through my clamped nostrils.

Things not worth thinking about.

Because I was greedy, I wanted the full biokinesis. There had to be a trade-off and in my case, speed was my dump-stat. It wasn’t like I was going to rely on Panacea’s power for offensive or defensive ops. I only needed that little bit of buffing boost to my insects.

Regardless, I’m going to keep my distance from New Wave for a bit. If anything, this has illustrated my need for stealth-slash-stranger powers. I said, even as I groaned at the mere thought of staking out a house ever again.

So, robbery or grave-robbing?

Christ, I am creepy. Robbery!

But why, I ask myself in mockery, when you know that you can’t exactly make money that way? Three hours of practice aren’t enough to get bugs with metal-eating acid. Plus, you know, it’s not exactly stealthy. Well, how about I don’t rob a place for money, but rather for more unlimited ‘powah’?

Currently possessing power nº1: a beach ball cloud of bugs with moderate range; and power nº2: extra slow, really slow touch-biokinesis, I could do with some offensive options. Not that a beach ball made out of bugs wasn’t horrifyingly effective, look at what Taylor could do with one of these. But I wanted something quicker and more tangible. And my research had yielded one juicy target.

Turns out that there’s a… guy, a white guy, a white shaved-head guy in Brockton Bay (yes, a neonazi) who owns a bar. But this bar is known for its interesting decorations. Namely, this old chap has several pieces and bits of bone spears from Marquis, hanging over the mantle-piece. A true display of the people’s (read: the Empire 88’s) victories.

How had he not gotten robbed before? Probably because he was smack-drab in the center of white supremacist power in the city. No enemies were that stupid.

(It was the government’s laissez-faire that I actually couldn’t understand? Were they understaffed or something. Wait, stupid question.)

Did that make me that stupid? No, don’t confuse things.

Destroying that guy’s bar and/or robbing his Empire trophies was a thing a gang would do to a rival gang to humiliate them. It would need to be flashy, or at the very least followed by copious bragging. Inter-gang relationships are essentially dick measuring contests after all. Besides the territorial disputes. Maybe. Sometimes.

I was just gonna tiptoe in (metaphorically), nab the things I personally wanted (with thousands of tiny ant hands) and abscond into the night (sike your robber is in another block). And then I was gonna avoid the whole district for at least a week. Flawless plan.

…

So why. The ever-living. Fuck. Are there. Fucking. Capes! In there!?!?

---

Spoiler

why yes this is short, but i changed my mind midway through this so now it's gonna be this.

 

6.

Don’t be suspicious. Don’t be suspicious. Don’t be suspicious. Don’t be suspicious. DON’T BE SUSPICIOUS!!

Bruh, the bartender must think I’m waiting here for a drug deal or something, the way I ordered orange juice and started sweating like a pale-faced pig after (pretending to) checking my (fake-ass) phone. Or worse, a cop.

I raise a finger to call him. “Can I get a orange vodka, just vodka and juice, sort of like, you know–”

“Vodka and orange juice, a screwdriver vodka. Yeah, coming right up.”

“Yeah, that, thanks.”

“Everything alright?” He asks nonchalantly as he prepares my drink. Only things I drink are the ones where I can’t taste the alcohol because it burns too much. Ah, absinthe… Flavored vodka is a good ‘thou shalt not get smashed tonight’ compromise.

“I screwed up.” I say with a thin, fake smile. “I think my boss might actually kill me.”

His eyebrows rise. “That so?”

“Nah, but I might be job-hunting tomorrow.” By necessity, tomorrow I might be applying for the oft vacant, very coveted, definitely deadly position of local vigilante. Seeing as I am listening in to what amounts to conspiracy– no wait, it’s definitely conspiracy to murder and hate crimes. Dear lord, christ almighty, grant me the appropriate mental gif for the following words:

What do you mean ‘acquire’ ‘undesirables’ for the ‘novices’ ‘initiation’?

“That’s rough.” NO SHIT.

“You have no idea.” I murmur. Every single word out of Krieg’s mouth makes the milk curdle in… Heaven? In good people’s homes? Well, it definitely makes my spine contract. Like that Tom and Jerry cartoon about Tom singing Figarro but Jerry gives him lemon and his face goes crinkle-swoosh-nnnn ? Yeah, that’s my faith in humanity right now.

Naturally, I feel very inclined to be the Jerry to these Toms. … wait, isn’t that another name for a pimp or something? …the Twitty to their Sylvester? Hm. Okay, no. Let’s restart.

Naturally I feel very inclined to –murder the shit out of these dickbags!– absolutely ruin their day.

Tiny, itsy-bitsy problem? I can’t. Like, I am physically unable to, my powers are too weak or unsuitable… probably. The more I think about it, the more I’m finding I could ruin their lives. Hello neuro-toxins~~ Don’t you just looove biology? But, well, that might put Taylor in danger eventually. I’ll still do it, but I need to take that into account.

The real problem is that they aren’t giving me locations. No locations, no stake-outs, no vigilantism, not even a police tip-off. I won’t be able to follow any of these guys around for a whole day.

The way I’m hearing it, they’re planning on nabbing a couple of people with ABB colors. Ugh, smart nazis, first let them do violence unto criminal minorities to start justifying it. But it sounds like they will be roaming on the lookout for targets, to get a measure of these new guys’ ‘hunting’ skills. Which leaves me with no location to even call the police to.

I sit there for another hour, slowly sipping my orange vodka. It has to be slow-going. I get queasy with rage just hearing these guys talk. The hearing, by the way, is the product of long-time fan-favorite combo: Skitterpan. You may laugh if you wish. I wanted to test out the new eye-flies and hear-wigs, as well as my mini-hercules and spider-people. C’mon, there’s at least one good pun in that batch!

Finally, finally, just as the meeting is winding down to a close, they finally spit out a meet-up spot. Washington Avenue! Could it be more cliché? Only in the South.

I stay in the bar long enough to let them leave, change bars, leave them another hour before I breach the security systems of the bar for good, cutting through the cameras’ wires.
Then, unsecured as my prizes are, it’s a question of having a trusty group of friendly ants, beetles and cockroaches pull little menhirs using their bug-power and pulling on tiny spider-silk ropes.

Adorably terrifying.

And because bone is nicely dense and heavy, say hello to more than one percent of Marquis’ power. Keeping in all the required secondary superpowers like regeneration, I focus on the tips of my most prominent articulations. I don’t need a lot. But I need it fast and I need it tough.

It hurts, god damn, it does and it doesn’t even come accompanied by a nice shniickt sound. But I have ten tiny daggers of yellow-white bone sprouting from my knuckles, so in the end, I win.

---

Spoiler

plot? i dunno. but the power count is now at 3.

 

Non-Falna Spells​

Spells as taken from the wikia.
Then translated into Old English (Elven).
¹A note on translations into Old English: word order was flexible because everything was inflected, as such several sentences have their structures altered aside from the verb-2 order always present.
²A note on Old vs Modern Elven: as elves are a long-lived, conservative race, the language is understood to not have changed much. To have in fact, resisted change at an institutional level. Particularly when applied to non-falna spells. 'Modern Elven' as language spoken by elves away from their forest would likely be evolving into Middle English.

Light Heal
Respond to the contract, holy sea.
Follow my order and heal the wounds.
>>
Þæt wordgeewide oncweþ tó, gastlic holm.
Min gebod híere ond þá benna gehæl.

Gale Blast
Respond to the contract, wind of the forest.
Follow my order and cut down my enemies.
>>
Þæt wordgeewide oncweþ tó, wealdes wind.
Min gebod híere ond mine fáhmanas forhíewe.

Flare Burn
Respond to the contract, flame of earth.
Follow my order and burn the violence.
>>
Þæt wordgeewide oncweþ tó, bæl eorþan.
Min gebod híere ond þá nídsynne forbærn.

Wind Felicital
Respond to the contract, breath of life
Follow my order and provide divine protection
Take shelter, wind of power, king of the cyclone
Spin a hymn here.
>>
Þæt wordgeewide oncweþ tó, lífes gæst
Min gebod híere ond dryhtwurþe nerunge scrýde
Eafoðes wind, hléowse, þodenes cyning
Her, spinn offrungsang.