Title Here: Multi-fandom Writings

___Introduction

“—? What do you say?”

She blinks. Her fringe brushes her forehead (she doesn’t have a fringe?) and she looks up. Faces she doesn’t know stare back at her.

“W-well–” She inhales at the wrong moment and (mercifully) chokes on air. Around her, they fuss to get her a glass of water. Red-faced, she struggles to get her breathing back under control. (and her wits)

She doesn’t know what’s going on, surrounded by people she doesn’t know, sitting at a table she’s never seen, hair falling long over her forehead and back like it’s never been.

“I–” Her voice is still raspy from coughing. She covers her mouth with the handkerchief provided and decides to just breathe. Lips covered, she gives the rest of the table what she hopes is an apologetic smile. Hopefully, they’ll leave her alone to recuperate (help!).

“Oh dear, this dinner has been nothing but bad luck.” The brown-haired woman in front of her comments. She is beautiful, an european face with brilliant green eyes, pearls draped over bare collarbones, ears adorned with heavy jeweled earrings and white skin contrasting with a layered magenta dress. “First Aria, and now Mielle…”

She knows those names. She knows those names together. (wait)

Her eyes rove over the people sitting at the table. She knows how these faces would look when drawn. (impossible)

She knows exactly where she is. (this is a joke, right?)

Yes, this is surely a joke. She brings a hand, trembling, to her hair. Blonde strands that, pulled lightly, prick at her scalp. Her hand fists and the sharp pain is the only thing that’s real in the moment.

A girl gets up, chair scrapping the floor. “Apologies, I–” her throat is inexplicably tight “I’m not feeling well.”

The girl leaves, a maid at her elbow. The girl’s eyes take in everything around her but she doesn’t see anything.

Breathing. Breathing is important. She can think about breathing, about her lungs (not the way they seem weak) and the airflow (not how these regressive clothes tighten over her ribs) and the oxygenation of her red blood cells (not how wrong her body feels).

A girl lays down in bed and passes, as one might colloquially say, the fuck out.

===

She wakes up. Many times she has wanted to fall asleep and not wake up, but she’s never been that lucky.

Many times she has dreamed of leaving her stressful life behind and going to another world.

This time, apparently…

She is that lucky. (?)

Her mouth opens and, in the silent and dark room, she hisses as low as she can. The murmured expletives are all she can do as her mind rapidly remembers her situation and the conclusions she had taken.

The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass was a webcomic she had read before (well, Before). The villainess returns to the past and relives her life, but better. It is a classic premise, with the addition that the original timeline saintess character had been the real villainess all along, so the revenge plot had the new heroine take on the actual villainess. She overcame those who manipulated her and, along the way, the disgraced prince fell in love with her, she elevated the commoners, became rich and educated and powerful. Ultimately, she revealed and defeated the conspiracy against the throne and the real villainess of the entire story.

There was even a sequel, epilogue comic about her time-traveling children.

But at no point in that entire plot had the villainess become an actual heroine.

It was a story that engaged the reader because the protagonist was still, bluntly put, a manipulative bitch. A better person, yes, but hardly a good person. She was a character deserving of awe but many flaws, just shy enough of making her unlikable. She was selfish, but not too much. She had empathy, but not for everyone. Cruel, but only for those who deserved her ire.

Almost only.

There was one person that the villainess wanted more than dead. She wanted her suffering. She wanted her ruined.

That person was the original timeline saintess. A girl that, in the new timeline, had been shown as petty, pathetic and out of her depth, manipulated by more ambitious evils.

Aria had not rested until Mielle was dead. Aria took immense pleasure in Mielle’s suffering. Aria hated and blamed Mielle for all of her past suffering.

She wasn’t wrong.

It was understandable.

(but I’m Mielle right now)

She is so fucked.

===

Bare feet on the ground, she navigates the dark room with her heart in her throat. There has to be a bathroom attached to this giant room (why does she think that?). She searched the bed for her cellphone but cellphones don’t exist. If she wants a torch she has to light a candle.

She moves very slowly, very quietly. In the darkness of the room, she can only barely see the bottom of the curtains over the windows. She heads in that direction, hands spread in front of her, moving at a snail's pace to not bump into anything.

(last thing I need is to make something fall down and crash!)

The fabric is heavy in her hands as she pushes it aside. The window opens to a garden, maybe the countryside. The moon is a pale light in the sky, barely illuminating the greenery. Truly, in the time before electricity, darkness reigned over humans.

Electricity, medicine, running water… no, Louis XIV had toilets and pipes, and this looks like a slightly more modern world. The printing press definitely exists. The faint illumination strikes all the frivolous richness of Mielle’s room. If anything, she could certainly have been born into worse conditions. At least she has access to medicine and a roof over her head.

What she looks for is the bathroom. To and fro, as she remembers that there are no light switches, and she will have to light a candle. But first, finding the matches to light the candle.

Eventually, after many false alarms, she manages to gently close the door behind her and, in the total darkness of a closed room, she manages to ignite a match. The light is bright and painful against her eyes. Hoping not to start a fire, she raises the candlestick above her head and steps in front of the washbasin.

There is a mirror here.

(not)

She stares. A deep feeling of unease rises in her gut.

A girl stares back at her. Her teeth grit together. A small turned up nose so unlike hers. A soft chin, round jaw. Eyes dark green like she’s wearing contacts. A wig of blonde hair, soft and fine and straight and not hers.

Where are the red marks around her nose, her cleft chin, her dark eyebrows, the stripes of her eyes, the damnable curl of her hair… Where is her father’s nose? Where are her mother’s cheeks? Does she not share eyes with her brother?

A buzzing cloud overtakes her hearing.

She sets down the candlestick on the ground and divests herself of the frilly nightgown that clings to the girl. It looks like a girl, young and prepubescent and so weak. Nordic pale skin, crowned in fine blond hairs and missing all the freckles of the sun. A curtain of hair falls down to its butt, like all the dolls and pretty things she liked but never wished to be.

“Eh.” The need for silence is forgotten. “Now I now what it feels like.”

(IHATEIT)

It’s fine tho. It’s alright. This child is still young so it doesn’t show a lot of the things she hates. She wasn’t very curvy either in the illustrations, was she? And the thin arms, well, some exercise will fix that right up. Swimming, pushups… She always wanted her hair to be straight and easy to tame when she was this age. This is a healthy body without hearing loss and old pains.

There are positives. Not many. Maybe enough to survive, for now.

Child hands grip the basin’s porcelain edge. Eyes closed, the weight of the hair is the only thing about this body that she can feel is wrong. She was thrown into one of the worst situations by Gods know which will and…

…and she must refuse. She cannot give up. She has to take that part of her that always imagines the worse and flip it upside down. It should be easy. Imagination is a two-edged sword. She can die, be executed, tortured, persecuted, starved, drowned, burned— she can pick up a sword, she can run, she can break a wine bottle in Aria’s face, she has become another person, she is free from late-stage capitalism, she can look for the magic pond, she can do so much. She can.

She has no real attachment to this collection of people. No strings tying her to this land. Everything can be reduced to a question of practicality. She cannot just leave because she is a child. There is money here to exploit, basically handed to her free of charge. Food, water, medical access, material wealth and potentially information. The Roscente family will give her that.

Emotionally, she might just hate them wholeheartedly.

The nausea makes her spit in the porcelain basin, a rancid taste in her mouth, but it’s receding. Something hotter and more volatile takes its place and she fans it higher. She is going to spite the orchestrators of her fate. She’s going to leave this narrative behind.

She stares into Mielle’s hateful eyes, a smirk playing on their lips. “So fuck me running.”

---

I don't know how many people know The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass, it's a korean? villainess returns to the past novel/webcomic. I fell in love with the outfits. Also, both are finished and it's a good read. By the end of it, I felt a little bad for the Roscente family (a little, particularly for Cain). But like... Aria is ruthless. This is a little fun experiment in Gamer systems without magic and... hm, the agender trans agenda? (like, an SI of me would not be okay with Mielle's body)
Also, going to avoid using any gamer screens or depict the least numbers possible.​

 

___Discoveries

Making plans is the easiest thing in the world. They only require some thought and a modicum of imagination. The candle wax dripping down, she sits on the floor and uses her mind.

She wants to survive and, more than that, live a good life. She has no desire to have revenge or hurt Aria in anyway, and if she did, she would discard that out of practicality. It’s possible, maybe even likely, to survive Aria if she doesn’t act like Mielle. The villainess softens and while Aria might think Mielle would suffer as a maid… she’s perfectly comfortable taking orders and cleaning. She’s even willing to live her life in prison if that’s what it takes.

Living comfortably is her maximal goal, no mistakes. She even has opportunities she didn’t have before. Like Aria, she’s older than she appears, more experienced. She knows what mistakes not to commit or paths that don’t suit her. Academia? No, carpentry is good!

She’s not going to fool herself into thinking her procrastination habits have mysteriously disappeared, but hindsight is not to be underestimated. Again.

Then there’s her situation. It’s tricky. A time-reversing bitch with a death grudge against her, an arranged marriage of all things and just the very present and awful misogyny from everybody. Aria had been unusual for wanting to study as a woman, she recalls. She managed to survive as non-binary in the modern world but here… well, she better start thinking about what ways the transmen of the past used.

“Yes, that’s a basic swot analysis alright…” A few strengths, a few weaknesses, a few opportunities and so many threats it’s overwhelming.

The prospects are bleak. This body is tired and needs sleep, even as the anxiety and anger rise and fall like waves inside her gut.

One last thing, before snuffing out the candle in the dark. She needs a name for herself. They really, really do, before she goes mad. She can’t think of herself in singular plural. She can’t be Mielle in any way, not even the past.

Mielle, honey in french. Then maybe… She turns her linguistic knowledge over. She wants to avoid the french, and to make it sharp, but still a name that she can identify with for a long time. Something meaningful.

(yes, let's have thorns for once) Silvas, brambles in portuguese. A common plant, found everywhere, hardy and harder to get rid of. She likes it. It's a surname too, so she can use it later, when she chooses another name.

Smiling with happiness for the first time of the night, Silva wets her fingers and snuffs out the candle.

A light appears in return.

===

Silva sleeps uncannily well that night. She wakes up with th the sun, in an incredibly soft and luxurious bed. She has slept one hour.

The rest of her night had been spent exploring and understanding the System.

God does exist, and they are not their enemy. A good thought, because they distinctly remember that in the epilogue, Aria spoke to God or something about her pregnancy and fate. (and God listened maybe)

If there is one blessing that Silva can understand and exploit, it’s the gamer system. She’s not even mad that she doesn’t have magic. It makes sense. A gamer system usually works within and exploits the reality it exists in. The original webcomic took place in a universe where magic was very present. Silva currently lives in a world where magic is a nebulous, soft thing that belongs in the realm of the divine.

Not having an mp gauge does not mean the system is useless. She explored the totality of her options during the night, and she’s quite confident that she can use it to survive. She has an inventory and just that is almost enough. The map, the codex? Cherries on top.

A maid opens the curtains while another girl starts preparing what must be a bath. She observes from beneath half-lidded eyes. One of the first things she’s going to have to do is to get a handle on the servants, both of what they do and what their loyalties are. That’s something she learned from the original story.

An older woman approaches her with a slight smile. “Are you feeling better Miss?” (not really)

She knows who this must be. The servant that raised Mielle, a former noble herself, and the woman responsible for the horrendous personality of the true-villainess. Her name, however, escapes her. “Yes, I am. A good night’s sleep was just what I needed.”

The day after Aria’s turnback is a bit too much of a coincidence. Aria needs to not suspect ‘Mielle’ had any knowledge of the future. So for now, Silva limits herself to observing.

She lets herself be pampered by these strangers. Aside from a quick opinion on which clothes to wear, or which perfume to use, very few things require Silva’s input. She draws on years of classical dance and the most rigid lessons in manners from her distant youth, and moves gracefully and with care. It’s exhausting to think she’s going to have to do this the entire day from now on.

It’s repulsive to contemplate the complete loss of privacy she has to endure. There are three people in the room. There are more servants outside. A maid brushes her hair, another makes her bed, and both helped her get dressed. Their touch, both familiar and impartial, makes her gorge rise up in her throat. She already feels tense. She has to keep her chin high and her heels pressed against the ground.

She cannot bounce her leg, she cannot tense her jaw.

She meets dark green eyes in the mirror. Impractically long hair requires long minutes to brush and prepare. She cannot afford to have a deadpan look on her face. (it’s my default FACE) Silva takes all of her feelings and hides them beneath an empty smile.

A pretty girl watches her back. The hint of a smile makes her almost a Mona Lisa, inscrutable.

For now, it will have to be enough.

===

The days of noble ladies are fairly leisurely. Mielle has lessons, as young noble ladies do, in manners, literature and mathematics. All formatted for a thirteen year old, which made Silva capable enough even when the source material was so alien. History is a different topic, and Silva would have given herself away in thirty seconds if it wasn’t for the codex.

The lessons are also all given by tutors, older noble ladies, which allows some latitude. She can simper that she had a bad night, or that she isn’t feeling too well, when she trips up.

She trips up enough, she can tell by Emma’s face. That’s the name of Mielle’s nanny, and Silva’s greatest obstacle. She’s the hardest to trick, but even she will get used to Silva’s much quieter mode of living.

She can’t do much about the clothing and the furniture that exude extravagant and richness. She has to use what Mielle already has, and agree with magnanimity when the servants say something is too old or not good enough. What a joke. She used jeans until they had holes in inconvenient places, and didn’t care if her shirts were scuffed. Now, a thread out of place or an inch too short is reason enough to stop wearing something.

She has yet to gather the guts to ask for things to be repaired instead. She takes her cues from Emma, much as it galls her. So long as the topic is not Aria or her the Countess, Emma can be relied upon to instruct her.

To be fair, it’s only been two nights.

And Silva doesn’t require sleep.

A lie. Silva’s body functions at its peak so long as she spends one hour asleep every twenty–four. She is a player character, as is written over her head.

She has a health gauge, for now untouched. As she is, it possesses the same regeneration speed of a normal human. Days, weeks. It is merely a handy way of visualizing her state.

In as many ways as she does, she also does not work as flesh and blood humans. Aside from sleep, she does not feel hunger or thirst, and likewise does not require a fraction of a real body’s consumption. The manual implied that she would start having penalties if she stopped taking care of her body, but she has not tested it. Sleep, food and drink do appear to re-apply whatever regenerating buffs she started with.

The greatest advantage of the system is that she does not decay. Nothing she gains is ever lost. No skill can degrade from lack of practice, or any muscle atrophy. She can only improve, even if her learning speed does not appear to be much better than a regular human’s.

Knowledge seems to be trickier, memory tied directly to her mind, and only an increase in intelligence would help.

A shame that levels don’t exist.

No, she can only strengthen herself by practicing. There are no free points for her.

===

Her back against the window, she reads. The light of the moon during these late summer nights was being generous, unhindered by clouds. She’s not paying a lot of attention to what she reads. It’s literature, which she’s unlikely to be quizzed on. Speed is her focus here.

The codex records every text that she reads, from simple notes to books, in their full or partial forms. From that moment on, she has an encyclopedia in her head that she can navigate at the speed of thought. She still needs to know what to look for and in which texts, but it’s a decisive advantage for somebody entirely out of their usual context.

When she finishes the chapter, she sets down the book. The curtains are closed and she moves to the center of the room. A quick swipe through her inventory removes her clothes and she hurries to equip comfortable underwear and chest wraps. The inventory’s equipment system allows for these sorts of quick changes.

Then she drops and gives twenty. There is no need to warm up, only the grind matters. She doesn’t skip leg day. Push-ups and burpees and lunges and crunches. They burn through her muscles pleasantly, then painfully, until she collapses. A seemingly arbitrary amount of time will pass before she’s ready to continue training.

She takes out a candle, lights it, and returns to the book. The routine will repeat throughout the night.

The plan is simple. First, she builds up her base stats by exercising. Mielle’s body is spoiled weak. Strength exercises are easy to devise, endurance ones much more challenging in her confined environment. Likewise, she builds up her knowledge and archives by speed-reading through as many books as possible.

Next, she can start on skills. Things like stealth, crafting, martial arts. At that point, her body should be sufficient to sneak through the house. The goal is to be able to leave and return through the window, expanding her range of options. As that happens, she can start building up a stockpile of everything that she might need, grabbing anything remotely useful and filling her inventory with clutter.

Once those basics are down, she can start making more concrete plans for her future escape. She’s probably going to need a horse, since magic won’t allow her to run the distances she needs. Getting a better handle of the relevant geography is also essential. Without it, she doesn’t know where to go, much less how to escape here. At least the neighboring Kingdom of Croa will be hostile to Mielle in the future, from her memories of the webcomic.

If she doesn't want to spend her whole life running, she’s going to have to find a way of changing her appearance. Oh, Silva has ideas, from cutting her hair to ripping her skin off. Her arms tremble and collapse under her. She breathes in, holds it in.

Good thoughts only. She exhales slowly.

---

Let's be honest, currently I'm a mess. So SIs it is. Also, I've been writing but not posting bccccccc schoolwork.​

I've reached the point where I want my teachers to fail me so that I can give up. Just... let me go. Let me go so I can apply to jobs in other countries without a care in the world.​

 

(A1)

When Lucy had been a small child, her mother had had the most wonderful of magics. She could call friends from the stars. Cancer and Capricorn and Horologium and Crux! Then one day, her mother became sick and the magic went away.

Mother went away too.

Later, when she was old enough to have her own lessons, she asked Mister Bero why he didn’t teach her the magic her mother wielded. Mister Bero taught her about magic, but Miss Spetto spoke in a low voice that her father only kept him in the manor because Mister Bero had been mother’s friend. Mister Bero became very serious, and very sad, and told her that celestial spirit Magic, the magic of her mother’s silver and gold keys, was lost.

A magic that had existed, right in front of her eyes, had just disappeared one day. Keys vanishing all over Earthland, mages with contracts broken.

Nobody knew exactly why… but a celestial spirit mage always kept their promises. The contracts were integral to celestial spirit magic. Somewhere, Mister Bero said, somebody might have broken the very rules that joined celestial spirits and mages.

How was that possible? What sort of cardinal sin, of violation, could a human mage commit that would invalidate the very precepts of Celestial Spirit Magic? Keys had been wielded by both monsters and saints throughout history, and the contracts between mage and spirit rarely stipulated terms based on mortal morals. It would have to have been something that went against what was written in the very stars.

Lucy never asked Mister Bero about it again, but she wondered, in the privacy of her thoughts. Instead, finding her mother’s magic impossible to grasp, she begged the wizened, little old man to teach another magic.

After many attempts, in rare lessons between all the necessary teachings of a young lady, Lucy discovered she had a very moderate talent for spacial type magic. She made a spacial pocket where she could store things, and she became adept and teleporting objects away from her. It was really useful to get out of her dresses at the end of the day. As a descendant of celestial spirit mages, there was little else she could do. Perhaps one day she would be capable of celestial divination, or sympathetic magic, but that wasn’t really what she liked.

In the large, haunted halls of her father’s mansion, and in the dreary, snake-pit events that she had to attend, Lucy grew with a hidden streak of rebellion. It was the little things, like how she could sneak cakes from the trays without being seen for hours at the buffet, or how that annoying viscount tripped on a banana peel that hadn’t been there a second ago.

Everything came to an end sooner or later. Lucy loved her father, truly, but she was not going to get married to expand his fortune. The very idea of marrying a man like him, that would keep her cooped up like he did, before she ever even stepped a foot out of the estate and explored the world… It made her sick to her stomach.

Lucy left. Quiet like a cat, she took her least expensive clothes and walked herself to the train station after dinner. Nobody questioned the young heiress, and she realized, several hours into the trip that would deposit her in the capital, that nobody knew who she was.

Lucy of no particular last name was free.

As she stepped into the cobbled streets of the capital, filled with more people than she’d ever seen anywhere, something became clear like the sky within herself. It took Lucy a few seconds to realize that feeling wasn’t just emotional.

Something had changed about her magic.

-Dear Mother,

-I received magic from the skies today. I don’t know how to explain it, and I don’t have the energy to try and figure it out now, for the day was very long. I managed to find a hotel by chance. Did you know, hotels have hours at which they don’t accept more people? Maybe you did, since you and father weren’t always wealthy.

-Regardless, I’ve left home. I hope I’m not worrying everybody too much, but I had to leave, like I’ve told you before. I’m going to explore the world, and maybe even become a guild mage now that my magic has changed!

-I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow,

-Love, Lucy

---

Randomized stories is how I get the writer's blood flowing. Obligatory links to the Celestial Menagerie document and the original thread in SV. I'm vetoing the entire SCP category and some categories that are too machine-like for me.​

Tried adding a bit of change by making it that the Eclipse Gate totally fucked over all celestial spirit mages. lmao​

 

(A2)

Not being woken up by a maid was so strange. Lucy overslept, never having been a morning person. When the sun’s rays made it past the curtains and shone merrily on her skin, she opened her eyes to a brand new life. No more dressing in long and ruffled dresses, no more breakfasts in a huge hall.

Actually, Lucy only had three changes of clothes, and no idea of what to do about breakfast. Surely, she could buy some food somewhere?

Crocus was enormous, full of life in a way that was both amazing and a little intimidating. The blonde girl flitted from store to store, buying some clothes, food, and necessities for later. There were enormous magic shops, filled with magic items and books. She passed by the biggest cathedral in Fiore, climbed to a tower to be able to see the cityscape and surrounding mountains, watched the boats pass by in the river that snaked through the houses.

And when she looked at a clocktower, curious about the time, it was already late afternoon. She hurried to find a place to sleep. A day later, she found herself in the same position. Three times was too much so, with a lot less money than what she’d started with and many more worries, Lucy decided to leave Crocus. She took a train to the closest village, hoping to finally have time and space to try out her magic, and maybe figure out a plan for her trip.

Dondroffe was mainly composed of fields and more fields. It had a very peculiar smell, something that Lucy had never experienced before. There was one inn, but it did have space. After being charming and a little lost, Lucy managed to get permission to practice her magic in the far off fields that weren’t being used, so long as she didn’t scare the cows.

Sitting on an old fence, Lucy focussed on the contract. Her very own celestial contract. It wasn’t a pact that allowed her to summon celestial spirits. Instead, she could summon creatures. Like the name suggested, mostly animals, she thought. The exchange was clear, if somewhat creepy to think about. Her soul would house the patterns of life and in return, she’d be able to summon them to her aid once a day.

“Alright. You can do this!” Even if she’d never done any big spells, and was somewhat scared that a spell without incantations or focusses wouldn’t work. “Just will it. It’s just a different way of doing magic.”

She needed to know what her magic could do, or she wouldn’t be able to become a freelance mage or anything. She’d have to go back home.

She stretched her hands forward and called forth her only summon with all her will.

A point of light, like a star, expanded into a dark shape. The Celestial Buffahorn took its first step in the world. Lucy’s eyes widened at the majestic animal. Bigger than even the cows on the field, it looked like an enormous buffalo, with great horns rising far above a large head, and shaggy fur. All of it paled to how the Buffahorn was a piece of the most brilliant night skies condensed into a solid shape.

Stars shone like glitter on fur coloured by red and pink nebulas, and two brilliant suns looked down at Lucy from the dark of space. Mesmerized, she reached forward, sinking her hand into soft fur. The Buffahorn let her, bending his head down to receive her pets.

“Oh Lord, you’re so pretty.” Lucy whispered. Using the magic, basic knowledge about her new friend filled her. She knew a bit about him, what he was capable of and how long she could keep him summoned. She knew now that every single of her summons would look like Buffahorn unless she made an effort not to. …but why would she?

As she looked up at the Celestial Summon, she remembered her mother’s spirits, her friends. They hadn’t been there when she had passed away. The reason why still haunted her a little bit, like it probably haunted every Celestial Spirit mage in the world.

And now, Lucy had a contract with the Celestial Menagerie.

Right then and there, she decided. All quests needed a goal, didn’t they? Sure, Lucy hadn’t run away from home with any particular goal in mind. She’d dreamed of discovering the rest of Fiore, even the rest of Ishgar, and becoming a bit more powerful mage and having adventures… and just maybe write her book and publish it. Becoming an adventurer, a mage, a writer: really just her fantasies and dreams.

But discovering what had happened to Celestial Spirit Magic?

Now Lucy had something to work towards. “Hmmm…” Slowly. “How about we go on a ride first?” She told Buffahorn. “Maybe we can figure out a way to get money. I think there are bounty boards?”

---

Buffahorn.​

Oh boy, the rolls would NOT land on anything under 300. I think Lucy is destined to have a Taurus figure, I suppose.​

 

(A3)

Almost a week after running away from home, Lucy woke up in another room that was really small and not her own. Although she was starting to suspect that rooms belonging to normal people weren’t as large as her old room.

The day before, she’d made up her mind and decided that her big quest was going to be the resolution of magic’s newest mystery. The Loss of Celestial Spirit Magic. She’d also spent a good afternoon playing with Buffahorn. Her summon was really strong and fast, even if turning and stopping were not his strengths. Lucy had discovered that first hand after riding him through the fields. She’d been sent flying head over heels.

“Owie.” She was still sore. “Hm? Wait…” Something was different, she felt it. “Oh my god, my magic!” She had a new summon. “An Ocular Orthopod?”

The information the Menagerie instinctively provided told her that it was something small. Lucy decided to summon it. An Ocular Orthopod, it turned out, was a bug that fit in Lucy’s palm, that stood up with two legs, and one single eye that stared up in fascination at everything. Its head, more eye than head, had six spines like a tiny crown. Lucy wasn’t a fan of bugs, to be honest.

Thankfully, it actually looked kind of cute as a night-sky coloured little guy, with a huge blue sun shining in place of the eye.

Unwilling to unsummon it just yet, she brought it up to her shoulder. “Wanna hold on?” The Orthopod scuttled forward, tiny legs tickling her skin.

Dondroffe must have been close enough to the capital that nobody paid much attention to Lucy’s little pet as she traveled back to the train station and bought a ticket back to Crocus. She still wasn’t sure of what direction to take in her journey, she really needed to plan her itinerary, but the capital’s library was a good place to start.

It should have something on Celestial Spirit Magic.

She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. As soon as she arrived in Crocus’ main station, a couple of tall security officers approached her. Had she done something wrong? It couldn’t be about her summon, right? He was a harmless little guy.

Their eyes were calm and respectful. “Miss…”

Drat. Her father! Lucy panicked. She didn’t want to go back and so the only solution was to run away, really fast.

“Miss!”

Lucy didn’t look back as she bolted from the station. Her smaller stature became a boon as she slipped into the crowds. She ran through the main thoroughfare, then turned into the first street she saw, continuing to run until she collapsed against a wall. She looked back, but her pursuers were nowhere to be found. Random people were giving her odd looks.

She’d also gotten very, very lost. “Oh no.”

It was fine. The castle was a huge landmark, right? Lucy had already explored a lot the last time she’d been here, she could definitely find her way.

-Dear Mother,

-Crocus is a very, very big city. I got lost, but it was fine in the end. I managed to find a hotel and the library, although I didn’t have time to do a lot of reading. Anyway, I’ll continue looking for the mystery of Celestial Spirit Magic tomorrow.

-I wish you were here. Maybe we could figure out what happened together, and you could summon Cancer and Capricorn again.

---

Ocular Orthopod
Before I forget, Lucy gains 50 points per 500 words and rolls, she also rolls for powers every 10 rolls instead of choosing (bc im in charge). I'm having fun getting Lucy from sheltered heiress with a bit of magic to basically her canon persona.

 

✧✦Congratulations, Congratulations, you’ve been chosen to be the newest member of the Celestial Menagerie!✦✧
-! -!!
✧✦Oh, you already know how this works? Great! Let me just finish.✦✧
-?
✧✦NOT!
-?!
✧✦Oh your metaphysical face! Hilarious!✦✧
-!?
✧✦Right, you didn’t think you were one of those one in a bajillion souls that can support the Celestial Menagerie, now did you? You wish!✦✧
-...
✧✦You do wish a lot tho! So much that I’ve decided to throw you a bone! I’ll allow you the usage of the powers section of the Menagerie. It’s less soul-ripping and taxing on your metaphysicality, so you can actually use it, more or less. How about it, nice, aren’t I?✦✧
-... …
✧✦Good, you know you don’t have a choice. I do like it when they’re not stupid! Make it fun for me, yeah?✦✧

Celestial Menagerie NOT​

✧300✧Insufficient Points!
✦0✦Bonus Points (100): You gain 100 bonus points. You can gain this benefit any number of times.
✧Automatic Reroll Activated!
✦50✦Calming Aura: You gain a calming aura that affects animals or other non-sapient creatures. This aura calms agitated creatures and prevents them from panicking even in stressful situations.
✧150 Points✧

The first thing shzh— AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!” PAIN

The last thing their mind comprehended was ‘Why did I ever want to be special?’.

They passed out, blood streaming from their nose, eyes and mouth, twitching like a dying bug on the sand. They would remain unconscious for another three days, completely missing the boy that found them discarded amidst the garbage on the second day, dying of exposure. They would miss the ambulance’s sirens, the police tape, the buzz of medical professionals around their weak body and the opening of a brand new casefile.

Instead, they woke up in a hospital room, alone and very confused. It was a sentiment that wouldn’t go away any time soon, for everybody involved.

Several days later, a Saturday, she was reading a book. Things had settled down, the police unable to get anything else from her, and the doctors still unable to help her further. Everything felt new to her, from her body to the fabric that made up her temporary bedding. It was worrying how much she felt displaced and alone, so she did what she did best, and distracted herself. Since television was a no-no, all she had were the books from the hospital’s meager library and the old magazines scattered basically everywhere.

She was very surprised when one of the nurses announced that she had visitors, and asked if they could come in. Who would visit her? Usually, the cops didn’t visit as much as they came to give her updates or ask her questions.

“It’s the people who found you, a boy and his teacher. Would it be alright for them to come in?”

“Oh. Sure, sure.” She hurried to set down her book. “I want to thank them myself too!”

The pair that came in, several minutes later, was a study in contrasts. The guy who had found her, a boy in blue sweats, was short and had unruly green hair. Or rather, he looked short next to the adult, a beanpole of a man that had to hunch over not to hit the doort top, and had even unrulier yellow hair.

“H-hello!” Said the boy.

“Hi. You have green hair.” She shook her head. “Ah, shit sorry. My brain’s still all messed up. Just, hello! So you’re my hero?”

The boy turned incredibly red. “H-h-hero? Me? I-I.”

“Yeah, if you hadn’t found me I’d be seagull food.” She laughed, stopping herself after a second as gruesome images crossed her mind. She rubbed the side of her neck, that still sported a bandage. “That makes you a hero in my book, even if it’s not, you know, a superhero.”

“It was nothing! Anybody would have done it. I mean, it’s a civic duty, who wouldn’t-” He was interrupted by the adult in the room.

“Just accept the girl’s compliment, you deserve it. You haven’t even introduced yourself!” He sighed. His blue eyes were sunk into deep shadows but they twinkled as they met hers. “Sorry about that young lady, I’m Toshinori Yagi and this is Midoriya Izuku. It's a pleasure to meet you properly. How are you feeling?”

“Nice to meet you too, Mr Toshinori, Mr Midoriya. I’m…” She shrugged. “I’m… well, about as okay as I can be.” She gently knocked on the side of her shaved head. “My brain was kind of, hm, bleeding everywhere, so my memory is all messed up. But on the other hand, everything else seems to be working fine up here!”

“Oh, you have amnesia, like in the movies? What have you forgotten? How did you… Ah, I-I shouldn’t have asked, sorry!” Midoriya backpedaled.

“It’s fine. I don’t mind. I don’t have a lot of memories to be upset over anyway. It was scary when I woke up, but by now I’m used to it.” She gave him a thumbs up. “Human minds are very resilient!”

“I’m glad, I mean, I’m not glad you don’t have your memories or happy in any way, I just mean that it’s good but not a good thing, that you’re feeling okay.” Midoriya shut his mouth with some difficulty as Mr Toshinori laid a hand on his shoulder, and shot her tremulous smile.

The older man picked up the conversation. “What young Midoriya means is that he’s happy that you’re feeling better young, hm, Nanase, is it?”

“Yep, unless I remember how my name is spelled, that one is what I’m going with.” All that she had remembered about her own identity was the number seven. The police was going to entertain themselves with that and the missing people lists, while she had taken some time with a psychologist and a dictionary. She’d settled on Nanase. It sounded right. “Anyway, I was told you found me on the beach, I hope I didn’t scare you too much?”

The boy’s eyes went distant and he let out a hollow chuckle as his mind retreated to a morning several days past. “Ahah, a little bit. It was a surprise to find an unconscious person covered in blood in the middle of the garbage…”

“Pardon me, the garbage?”

The visiting duo recounted how they’d found her. Apparently Midoriya was voluntarily cleaning up a beach, and he’d found her as he was working. Mr Toshinori had kept him from panicking and carrying her to the hospital all by himself, since you weren’t supposed to move people with possible back injuries. Or from a potential crime scene. Unfortunately, visiting hours didn’t last forever, so after a warning from the nurse, they departed after concluding the story of Midoriya’s first ever call to the emergency services.

Nanase waved them goodbye with a smile. She hoped they visited again. They didn’t have a reason to, Nanase herself didn’t know where she would be in two weeks. But despite her tiredness, this was the best social contact she’d had since she’d woken up. Not doctors or cops or more and more questions she couldn’t answer when she really, really wanted to be able to. Midoriya, Izuku, was probably about her presumed age too. It made her feel a little less alone.

✧250 Points✧
✧Ready Roll…✧

---

This is your friendly neighborhood writer, once again procrastinating because this is kinda hopeless man.​

Mm, I had to close the tabs I was working with, so I lost the thought thread that I was going on with Lucy? Err, I haven't been focusing on continuing stories at all. Right now I'm only dumping all my power into just writing to avoid getting sucked back into Elden Ring (ahah). kinda sorry but not really. i'll get back to everything when I want to.​

 

1.0

The first step to the front porch is rotten. I only remember this detail when I lay my eyes upon the house. Unsteadily, I avoid putting my weight on it and let Danny pass me to open the door. He’s still worried. I can’t blame him. I still avoid any form of conversation and make my way directly upstairs.

My room must be the one at the other end of the corridor. I close the door behind me and take a moment to examine its layout. A window in front of me, the bed to my left and the desk to my right, along with a door to a closet. It’s small but not tiny, and it has been recently cleaned. I pull at the hoodie’s bottom; Danny must have gotten this from here. He probably also snooped around. I wonder if that’s something I will need to worry about.

I have more pressing concerns right now. With a sigh, I throw myself onto the bed and stretch out. It takes a moment for me to pull what I’m looking for from the back pocket of the jeans I’m wearing, covered by the long hoodie.

It’s a smartphone. It works like a normal one too, with a good internet connection and the usual apps. It’s only strange for two reasons: Taylor Hebert did not have a phone. And this model was from seven years and several dimensions into the future.

Hi, I’m Taylor Hebert now. Make of that what you will.

All functionalities on this phone are blocked right now. When I woke up in the hospital, alone and late at night, this thing had all the answers. Unfortunately, in my haste, I made a certain decision that I was half kicking myself about. The smartphone, which was distinctly abnormal in an abnormal situation -namely my body wasn’t the right body-, displayed a message. An advertisement.

I could get powers, but there would be a condition. I was freaking out, alone, so I accepted.

Now the thing is locked, not letting me access the internet. The browser is stuck on a page that tells me to insert my choices. The rules are simple: I write down the name of three devil fruits, one paramecia, one logia and one zoan, and I get their respective powersets. No triple water weakness, no exploding from eating more than one fruit, not even the ultra bad taste. I only have to write down three fruits. In japanese. The catch comes later.

“The thing is: I stopped reading One Piece after Logetown. Loguetown?” I couldn’t parse the drawing style. My knowledge is fanfic borne. And that one movie in which Nami is kidnapped.

The condition imposed later, I can almost guess. Giving devil fruit powers to a person who lives in a town attacked by Leviathan? I don’t need to be a writer to figure that one out. But surviving Worm without powers was also unlikely. It was a hard, rocky place to be.

I sigh and start typing out my choices. The Logia is almost easy, basically all of them are good, but I only remember two of their japanese names. Enel’s and Blackbeard’s. In this city, without knowing how Blackbeard does his power-steal thing, and having played Infamous, my gut told me Enel’s was the way to go. Goro Goro no Mi.

The Paramecia is the hard one, because I only know Luffy’s, and I hate the rubber fruit. But wracking my mind, I remembered the villain from the movie, and his fruit is so much better. It will allow me to fly. Now to see if I got it right… Fuwa Fuwa no Mi. It gets accepted, good.

The Zoan isn’t hard either. I want some sort of furry or feathery animal, and I would love if it synergizes with the others. Cat is the way to go. Neko Neko no Mi. It gets rejected. “Don’t tell me I also have to input the model.” I try several things. Lion, Jaguar, Cat, Ocelot until the Leopard Model gets through.

As soon as I tap the done button, the phone’s screen starts shining. A hologram appears, then starts gaining color and substance until I have a bonafide little bowl with a fruit salad in it, floating in front of me. I carefully reach for it and grab it. The smartphone pings.

The new message is what I feared but expected. The condition is that I cannot leave Brockton Bay’s premises before May 31st of 2011. I can safely place the Leviathan attack as happening somewhere between one and several days before June starts then. Currently,it’s the second week of January. It gives me five months.

Filled with trepidation, I reach for the spoon and shovel a mouthful of mysterious fruit into my mouth. “Oh, it’s actually really good.”

---

Going for something a little more amoral, also present tense writing (that's the hard part). You can't see it here, but not!Taylor doesn't give a fuck about the Worm characters, being burned out from the fandom. She'll be more moved about the theoretical plight of the civilians in BB but she's stuck in the city until effing Leviathan, so she might as well break as many nazi and triad-yakuza bones as she can.​

Is the powerset super as hell? Kind of. She doesn't get Rokushi or Haki or any OP crazyness, and on top of that, she's not a shounen character, so the full potential of those fruits are not going to materialize.​

 

✦100✦Micro Bonus: Each time you gain a creature costing between 50 and 300 points you also gain one 0 points creature of your choice.
✧150 Points✧

Celestial Menagerie NOT 2​

The morning sun should have cast a pleasing light over the ocean.

“Wow. This is some garbage. It’s not even a trash heap. It’s a complete and total dump.” Nanase whistled. Takoba Municipal Beach stretched out in all its infamy ahead of her. “I see Mr Toshinori. Can I go?”

Her escort, a volunteer called Daishou, nodded. It was a bit hard to understand, as his head was a turnip. A very carefully groomed turnip, but still, a turnip.

“Hey! Mr Toshinori!” She waved as she jogged towards the very tall man.

The blonde coughed in surprise, alarmingly spraying blood. “Young Nanase!?” A clang came from the beach and Midoriya’s green head appeared from behind an unidentifiable hunk of metal. “N-Nanase!?!? What are you doing here!?”

“Hi Midoriya!” She waved at him too and pointed at her head, covered with a woolen, orange cap. “I came to see if the place where I was found would spark some memories up here. Since it’s the only place I could have known. Could you show me where it was exactly?”

The police had kept up the tape around the spot for a few days, but it was long gone. It had been almost three weeks since the morning Izuku, permission given to use his name, had found her. Fairly close to the shore, but still surrounded by piles of rusting garbage, it was clear it hadn’t been the ocean to deposit her there. But absolutely nothing changed in Nanase’s head, the emptiness remaining the same.

“I’m sorry it didn’t help.” Izuku tried, next to her.

Nanase shoved her hands into her hoodie’s pockets. “It was a long shot. Thanks. Anyways,” She changed the subject, the feeling in her gut not worth dwelling on. “You’re cleaning up this dump eh? I was imagining something a liiittle less… huge, when you told me that.”

The beach might as well be called a junkyard at this point, and Izuku knew it. He sighed, rubbing a hand over his tired forearms. “Yeah, so was I… But it’s good training.” He pointed at several different spots on his arms, all of which were sore in different ways. “It engages all the muscle groups and it’s good community service on top of that!”

The girl blinked. “Training? For what?”

“Oh. I.” He looked away, then firmed himself. “I’m training to enter UA’s Hero Course!”

Nanase just stared. “Sorry, I don’t…” She vaguely gestured at her head, and mimed a poof-ing motion.

“You don’t know… right, of course, I’m sorry!” He hurried to explain. “UA is a school, the very best hero school in the country. It also has a General Course and Support and Management courses, for professions related to the hero industry, and those are very well rated too, but I’m aiming for the Hero Course. Most of the top heroes in the country right now graduated from UA, and I want to be a pro-hero, so… it’s got to be UA.”

Nanase was still getting used to the concept of pro-heroes, having just barely gotten over quirks. And that she had a quirk. She nodded. “Right. Cool, that’s cool. Well, like my mother says, if you’re going to learn something, you should do it with the highest quality possible, so I get…” Her eyes widened. “...if you’re going to learn something, you should do it with the highest quality possible…”

Izuku found his arms getting grabbed by a girl and stuttered as Nanase got very close. “W-w…”

“I need to write that down.” Her eyes glinted.

The pair scrambled back to the street, where Mr Toshinori was chatting with Daishou, and where Izuku had his bag. He passed her a notebook and watched as she frantically wrote down the sentence she’d been muttering under her breath like a prayer.

With a sigh, she completed it. “My mother always says…” Gently, her fingers rested over the characters on the paper. “Sorry. I just… get these things in which I know something about my past, and if I don’t notice it and write it down, they’ll just… be gone.”

Izuku waved her apology off. “No, no, it’s fine. I understand! It’s important to you, I’d do it too!”

“I normally have my own notepad, but I didn’t bring it with me today. Sorry about your notebook.”

“It’s fine, I have more… You can have that page. Let me…” He carefully folded and ripped the lined paper away. “Here.”

“Thanks Izuku.” She took and stowed the precious paper in one of her pockets. “Ok, safe. Hm, now what? It’s still early to go back to the hospital…”

A blonde head loomed over her friend. “Now, and I hate to interrupt you lovebirds, young Midoriya has to get back to training.” Mr Toshinori slapped Izuku’s back. “Get going, you zygote!”

With an eep and a face so red you could see it in infrared, Izuku raced back to the trash and started picking up an old television. Nanase cheered for him, and he almost tripped. Graciously allowed to stay and watch, the visiting pair enjoyed the rest of the morning sitting down by the beach. The smell wasn’t fantastic, but there was enough clean sand that she could pretend to be at a normal beach, and not a junk beach being cleaned by a struggling fourteen year old and an old man with health issues.

Nanase was going to have to think about school too. Not for this year. She had another week at the hospital before being fully discharged. In between then and now, she knew she was going to have some more formal placement tests. She’d already had the basics assessed by the neurologists during her first week, and it wasn’t like these tests were going to actually place her in one grade or another. They were just guidelines for the teachers at Takoba’s Middle School.

She’d gotten her age checked while she was unconscious. It had apparently involved taking, and regrowing, a few of her teeth to a specialist. She was somewhere between fourteen and sixteen, erring towards the younger side, so was going to join the last year of middle school. Then she’d have to make a decision on what highschool she wanted. Her shrink had been clear that that was the decision that mattered about her future.

✧250 Points✧
✧Ready Roll…✧

She blinked, and pressed a hand against her head. Her head had, almost, throbbed. Like a heartbeat inside the fragile veins of her brain. She heaved a shaky breath and turned to Daishou. “Sorry, Mr Daishou? It’s my quirk. It’s ready again.”

The volunteer narrowed his eyeholes. “Are you in pain?”

“No but… Dr Yamayou wanted to be informed if anything happened.” She knew the nice doctor in charge of her case wanted to record as much as possible to figure out if her quirk had any sort of pattern.

Mr Daishou nodded. “I’ll give her a call, but it might be best to return anyway. How about you go say goodbye while I do that?”

Nanase had figured. She nodded and got up. They were a bit confused to see her go just like that, but understood when she mentioned it was about her health. Mr Toshinori especially, seemed to get her. Weird if he hadn’t, considering his own state. Izuku and Nanase swapped emails, but then it was time to go.

Quirk testing time again.

---

The problem with celestial randomness stories is that you have to follow and keep writing the protagonist so that they keep rolling but not too much or they start accumulating too many rolls. I think I touched upon that in Monsterability, and also gave the protagonist one free roll per year.​

 

Nanase’s quirk didn’t make a lot of sense. It made so little sense that, in fact, they were still thinking on what name to give it before it was registered. The first hint that something might not have been right with it was what Nanase called: the subtitles.

To be fair, at the time, the doctors had blamed them on Nanase’s amnesia. It was natural that she’d know what her quirk was and how it worked. The ‘celestial’ part had been odd, but nothing more.

Then her quirk became ‘ready’ and everything changed.

Celestial Menagerie NOT 3​

“Okay.” Dr. Shinkei, the neurologist in charge of her case, cleared his throat. He was finally satisfied with the positioning of the electrodes covering her skull. “Now, remember, carefully.” The older man wasn’t very onboard with the idea of Nanase ‘using’ her quirk again, but he was also aware that not having a good baseline could lead to even more dangerous complications in the future.

Nanase’s quirk built up some sort of internal charge in her brain, which she could use to, apparently, expand her quirk. It was nearly unprecedented, the kind of quirk evolution expected to happen only in another couple of generations. It also rebounded on the fragile blood vessels of the teenager’s skull, and the only reason why the scientists could believe that her quirk really did do at least something extra.

Nanase gave him a thumbs up and waited for the nurse in charge to give her the signal. Nervous butterflies were making their nest in her stomach. The last time she’d activated her quirk, she’d ended up with a very painful headache, a terrible nosebleed, and a migraine that followed her for days. Before that… well, something had clearly happened to Nanase’s brain on Takoba beach.

But if what if not using her quirk made the energy build up and up until… something terrible happened inside her brain?

Nanase could tell she had about two and a half pieces of energy available. Those were already scary enough. No, it was fine. She was surrounded by an emergency medical team and quirk drawbacks could be mitigated through careful and controlled training. She would be fine.

The signal was given. Nanse closed her eyes reflexively as she activated her quirk.

✦0✦Bonus Theme: You gain a new theme of your choice. You can gain this benefit any number of times.
✦Earth✦Your creatures look like they are made of the ground beneath you. Be that looking like a pile of dirt and rock come to life in the rough shape of the creature, like a sculpture made of unfired clay, or even as though the asphalt and sidewalk of a road got up and decided to walk away. They are not made of such, simply appearing to be, nor can they manipulate the earth in any way.
✧Automatic Reroll Activated!
✦100✦Contingent Summoning: You can choose a creature so it's summoned in a specific place related to you and upon a set trigger of your choice. Should that trigger be met the creature is immediately summoned. The trigger can be anything that you can imagine. As long as a creature is set to be summoned this way you cannot summon it normally. You can only have one Contingent summoning activated at a time.
✧150 Points✧

First there was only a pinch and the familiar feeling of warm wetness on her upper lip. Then, the pinch returned and suddenly her head hurt so much. The teen girl’s hands dug into the bed’s mattress and a whimper escaped her. It was even worse than last time. She was vaguely aware, through the slowly fading pain, of being resettled into a recovery position.

“Nanase, Nanase? Do you need to be sedated?” A nurse was gently asking her.

She used her hands to wave a no and asked for a few minutes. In the background, two doctors were going over the data wired from the electrodes into a computer. “It’s only a little worse than last time.”

“Alright. How much energy do you think that was?” Dr Yamayou, her quirk specialist, asked.

“Hm, only about one piece but, first there was like… a dud, so it started spinning around again and that part hurt more.” At the doctor’s prompting, she recited what her quirk told her she had gotten. At that point, she’d recovered enough to drink some water and explain better the feeling of her quirk. “It’s all about the creatures again, so nothing. But, hm, it was like it spun, landed on a thing worth no energy…”

“The theme benefit.” Dr Yamayou was scribbling on her clipboard.

“Yeah, then something different was spinning and I got the earth theme. And after that the energy started spinning again and I got the contingent summoning.” All four of her abilities, her aura, two summoning options? And the theme. All were clearly written in Nanase’s mind. It was like she had ‘subtitles’.

“Alright.” The doctor wrote something sharply before putting her notes away and turning her full attention to Nanase. “It really is looking like your quirk gives you abilities related to creatures. It’s possible that your main quirk is Summoning or something like that. Unfortunately, it might have gotten damaged during your incident.” And whether or not Nanase would recover that was a complete unknown. “It’s also clear that the more energy your quirk uses in thi mode, the more it can hurt you. Knowing what we know now, I would recommend that you do activate your quirk when you become able to, so long as there are medical professionals to monitor your safety, okay? No using your quirk willy-nilly. I’m writing this down on your profile so I need you to promise me you’ll be careful with your quirk.”

Nanase pouted. “I’m not an idiot. I don’t want to end up brain dead…”

Dr Shinkei approached them. “But you are a teenager, so prone to not doing reasonable things like wanting to wear seatbelts or helmets.”

“That’s completely different!” She protested.

“We trust you to be careful, Nanase. Now, I think you should go with Dr Shinkei, the CT scan isn’t going to wait for you.” Which was a lie, Nanase was going to spend another hour or so waiting for it to be her turn.

With a sigh, the girl left the bed and walked over to the nurse that would be keeping her company until the imaging department’s waiting room. Then she stopped, eyes growing wide.

✧250 Points✧
✧Ready Roll…✧

She turned back to the doctors. “Hm, it’s happened again.” She swallowed nervously as the doctors frowned in confusion and worry. “It’s ready again. What… what do I do?”

---

The celestial menagerie is not a quirk, and barely tied to Nanase's body. (in fact, she doesn't have the genetic factor, ahah, that's going to be fun later on) I wanted to explore a bit how a drawback because of the soul incompatibility could be approached by medical professionals.​

Also, I need the word count ahah......... ah.​

 

✦0✦You choose a category, and roll to gain something in that category, paying the normal cost for the rolled entry. If you do not have enough points to afford it, you keep your points. You can gain this benefit any number of times.
✦Mundane Animals✦100✦Vermilingua✦ Giant Anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla)
✧Micro Bonus Activated!
✦Portal/Half-life/Fallout✦0✦Companion Cube✦
✧150 Points✧

At last, finally, Nanase’s quirk was working as it should be. It looked like she could gain creatures to summon, just like she gained new abilities. The reason why she hadn’t been able to summon any, was because whatever trauma had occurred had wiped her storage.

Well, so they guessed.

She was quite happy with her summons. One of them was an anteater, which was cool. The biggest one there was too. And the other was… cute? Well, she liked the companion cube, even if it made everybody scratch their heads about how it could be considered a creature.

She’d also discovered the rules for her summoning. Once per day, five hundred meters, always friendly, yada-yada. It told them something about her power, like how many points of energy she could use at a time. Well, nine-hundred… it would make her brain burst like a balloon, best case scenario. But it wasn’t like she could control how her quirk worked behind the scenes, so all she could do was pray.

Dr Shinkei called it the worst russian roulette in the world. Then he apologized for being insensitive. Now Nanase had the image of putting a gun to her head firmly lodged in her imagination, though.

Mr Giant Anteater was good for cuddling during those dark times. The hospital didn’t allow her to summon it inside, but their rules wouldn’t matter for long.

The police had no leads in her case. The doctors had gotten her as healthy as they could. It was time for her to return to proper society. With no relatives or anything, Nanase was going to go live in a children’s home. And it wasn’t even going to be in Shizuoka.

Celestial Menagerie NOT 4​

“Thank you for inviting me, Ms Midoriya.” She bowed primly. “You didn’t have to.”

“Nonsense, please come in.” Izuku’s mother waved her inside the apartment. “Izuku has been so worried about you, I’m glad I’m finally meeting the girl he saved. It’s just a shame that it’s at a goodbye party…”

Indeed, Nanase had been invited for dinner at the Midoriya household before she was sent away. “Hey Izuku. How’s training going?”

The boy who’d saved her was bouncing on the balls of his feet. He looked nervous and tired. “It’s good! I increased my reps just yesterday! We-welcome to my house!”

It was a clean and homely apartment. Nanase did her best not to stare at any pictures, although her eyes still got caught by an adorable picture of a young Izuku in a hero onesie. Apparently, he had been a hero fan since forever. “Thanks for inviting me. You didn’t have to.”

He waved his hands in front of himself. “I just talk about you with my mom, nothing bad, or personal, just that you were going to leave, and she decided we should have dinner. Really, it was all her idea.”

“Still.” Then, she smiled. “Hey, guess what?”

“Guess…?”

“Guess who’s got a family name now.”

He gasped. “Re-really? How?”

“Ah, we still don’t know who I was.” She probably never would. “But I got to have one, so they gave me the choice to choose a name from my caretakers or to field a new family registry. Behold, now I am Kaihen Nanase!”

“That’s so good! I’m happy for you! Did you name yourself after the coast? How do you spell it?” He asked.

She had. Despite everything, Nanase felt a connection to the sea, and would have loved to spend more time at the beach. They chatted a bit before they set the table. Izuku was still very tired from his daily training and had to study on top of it. Nanase was happier listening. It wasn’t like her pool of knowledge was great either.

“So you’re getting sent to Yokohama?” The topic came up as they were finishing eating. “At least it’s not too far away, but still…”

It was more than one hour just by train. “Yeah. They have more space for lost kids like me up there. I don’t know where in the city it is, but the social worker seemed happy that I was being sent there, so I’m not very scared.”

“Still.” Ms Midoriya was worried. “Shouldn’t you stay closer to where your family might be?”

Nanase had to avert her eyes. “Mmm, well, there’s no actual proof that my family lives here. The police doesn’t know how I ended up at Takoba, plus…” She decided to bite the bullet. “Plus, one of the officers told me it might be safer than staying here…”

Since nobody knew how Nanase had gotten in that state, if there was foul-play involved, nobody could be sure that Mustufatu was safe for her. Even if there were a bunch of heroes living there. Ms Midoriya seemed to pick up on that and was wringing her hands in worry.

“Please don’t worry my mother.” Izuku whispered to her. “She gets nervous easily.”

Yeah, Nanase had wondered where Izuku had gotten that from. “Oops, sorry.”

Before she had to leave, the Midoriyas surprised her one more time. They got her a parting gift. Sure, it was just an All Might brand jacket, but it was the first gift Nanase had ever received. They didn’t have to. She was moved to tears, which started a cascade of sympathetic crying. She left the apartment in that brand new blue and red jacket, feeling a lot more feelings than she wanted to dwell upon. She decided to smile anyway. It was good to know that at least two people care about her.

---

At the rate Nanase is acumulating wordcount by being next to Izuku, it was going to start getting suspicious. We'll get a perspective on that soon. Also, I'm fudging the wordcount just a bit. If it gets between 960 and 1100 I count it as done and Nanase gets a ping. I also extend that in the temporal direction. For example, by that fit, right as she leaves the Midoriya household she's at 980 and is eligible for another pull. I decide to have her have it as she leaves the city the next day. This is because she's not in an active situation like a fight, in which she would get the immediate option.​

Couldn't resist the companion cube. It was either that, or a rabbit.​

 

A phone was essential to living in the modern world. And Nanase finally had one!

BeachGirl
You should change your nick into something funny!
like me​

BeachHero
How about this?
It isn’t too much?

BeachGirl
It’s perfect
My Hero~~
Don’t worry!!​

Celestial Menagerie NOT 5​

✧700✧Insufficient Points!
✧250 Points✧

BeachGirl
I was a bit afraid there would be bullies at the home
But it’s actually not bad
The rules are very strict, but I’m very good with rules. Adnd since i’m in the 3 year
*And
I’m only expected to obey the girls in highschool​

BeachHero
Is that fine?
Are they nice people?

BeachGirl
Well…
50-50?
But most of them have part time jobs
Money is important for us!
Or they just don’t spend time at the house
So i dont have problems​

One of her constant fears did happen. Thank God that she’d taken her doctors’ advice seriously.

She didn’t tell Izuku about the seizure she’d suffered the day she’d moved into Yokohama. Her friend was a worrywart. He definitely didn’t need to know how she’d spent her first night in Yokohama in the hospital.

She’d gotten a bit of a reputation as being fragile. Defective too, but she took several days before hearing that rumor. It would bother her more if the adults didn’t obviously keep their eyes on her more and protected her. Adults she could deal with. The younger kids… well, sometimes. It was people her age that were the problem. She’d gotten used to Izuku, who miraculously had a personality that meshed with hers.

Living outside the hospital was a struggle. She was constantly bombarded with new information and tripping up on things she should know. She’d already had to explain at school that she had amnesia. That hadn’t been very pleasant. Just reading the magazines at the hospital and watching television hadn’t been enough.

At school, she’d been given a couple of weeks to find a club activity since she was up to date with her school subjects. Nanase actually had a lot of knowledge in her seemingly empty wasteland of memories. Literature and social studies were so-so, but everything else? She’d excelled in the placement tests about science and discovered that she could speak English just as well as Japanese. Further testing had her re-discover French, Spanish and Portuguese, and showed how good she was with all earth sciences. She’d already aced a few mock tests for highschools.

Not having to worry about that was a weight off her chest. Nanase already had enough worries without having to add cramming for a good highschool in there.

It was also a good thing for other reasons. She made alliances with some of the other kids in the house by providing free help studying, and the possibility of setting up paid tutoring was enticing. It did get her off chores if she helped the younger children on their homework as bonus points.

BeachGirl
I joined a club​

BeachHero
?

BeachGirl
Newspaper Club
Our school’s is called Principle Poetry
Weird right?​

BeachHero
That’s cool! I hope you have fun!
My school doesn’t have one. My elementary did have a newspaper.
Every month a different class was in charge

BeachGirl
That’s interesting​

BeachHero
Is it called that because it’s in the Rishi Ward?

BeachGirl
…
ooooh​

At the suggestion of her doctors, she also joined the Track and Field Club. Not for competition, but as a member that just wanted to improve their physical condition. About a third of the members were like her. They only had to train twice a week. Ukio Middle School’s important sports club was the baseball team. They were the ones who’d actually gone to nationals in the last few years. The Track and Field advisors were much less competitive and strict.

Nanse didn’t really enjoy endurance activities, but the other things were cool. Still not like the newspaper club.

Being in the newspaper club was fun and helpful. It had her reading the newspapers, practicing her japanese and, more importantly, looking out for news. It meant she did research on what was happening locally and had to gather her courage to ask people questions. That was the main reason for her to join. Nanase wanted to stop feeling so alienated from everyday life. Being part of a project, and helping, seemed to be the best idea.

As a third year, she didn’t have upperclassmen to guide her, but her fellow students were still very helpful. The president, Shirokoku was a bit of a stick in the mud. She wanted her on editing and computer work only for the first two months before she got talked down by the much friendlier vice-president. God bless Hanashi. She kept everything running.

Before she’d noticed, it had been almost a month since she’d moved into Yokohama. The big city life really went by fast.

Perhaps because she was settling down, she was having time to process things. To acknowledge things. Like how in the hospital it had never been an issue that she didn’t have parents with her, just a sad fact of life. But at school, where she could see and hear everybody else with their families, suddenly sadness became painful more often. Nanase had been discovering so many things about herself lately.

She was Catholic. She hadn’t known that until somebody recognized that weird gesture she did sometimes as the sign of the cross. It explained her habit of using Amen, but what did it mean? She knew only bits of the prayers and didn’t actually agree with many things she found on the religion and its controversies.

And she’d known that, somewhen before. It was a familiar feeling.

Who was she? And how long could she keep bottling all of those parts that fit the shape of a person she wasn’t sure she was? Should she be that person? Was it even possible to separate them? It was her personality wasn’t it? How could she determine that?

She tried not to think about it, but sometimes, she summoned her furry friend just so she could cry into her fur. The knot in her that got too big and only crying it out helped a little.

✧350 Points✧
✧Ready Roll…✧

“Ugh.” Why now? Usually she could look forwards to her quirk being activated despite the potential drawback. It was so cool that her quirk was still getting more useful! But tonight? Tonight it just made her cry more. “I hate this.”

---

Fun fact, I did join the newspaper club at my school when I was in 5th grade. Of course, it wasn't a japanese school, so it wasn't exactly the same. Technically I am also catholic, but I haven't practiced since, well, about 9th grade. Mixing traits from my actual childhood to give Nanase a distinct personality.​

Gotta get the word count pumping a bit, because the Celestial Menagerie isn't being very helpful. I was already sensing Nanase would end up in General Education but, well, you'll see. I have a good outline of the next few chapters.​

 

✦100✦Survivalist: You become an extremely skilled survivalist, you can survive in the wild while naked, you are able to light a fire, create a shelter and find water and food in the most unlikely place.
✧250 Points✧

A niche but surprisingly useful thing? Nanase’s quirk really was weird, she thought as she dabbed at the blood leaking from her nose. Celestial Tamer didn’t even begin to cover it. Ah, but well, what else could they have called the mess that it was?

“Hm, nurse? Is it possible that I know so much science because of my quirk? Because this time I’ve been given a lot of knowledge about, like, plants and geology. It’s not very organized though.”

The red-haired nurse frowned. “I believe that’s something you should talk about with your quirk specialist. Do you want help scheduling a session?” Right. Sure, why not.

Celestial Menagerie NOT 6​

The choir’s songs were all so familiar. Not the lyrics, but the melodies, it was like she’d heard them a thousand times before. She was a bit lost, standing on the last benches of the church. Surprisingly, the Sunday service was nearly full. It made some sense, there weren’t many churches, and there were several different groups that were united by their religion. There were historical reasons for that. The beginning of the age of quirks had been very troubled. Not only had several groups been stranded in Japan during the many times when international travel and communication had been banned, but just about every country in the world had been the target and the origin of at least two migration wages. Or refugee waves, to be more correct.

There were a lot of enclaves and mixed groups everywhere in the world. And in the countries where order had managed to be reestablished without too much bloodshed, these persisted. Nanase supposed mass was not a bad place to remember that atrocities had been committed back then, and to pray for humanity’s strive for a better world.

Pray like everything depends on God and work like everything depends on you.

More words from the obscure past. But they felt good, meaningful. She repeated them in her head as the Father read one of the psalms. She’d have to look them up later. As the service continued, Nanase had to stop herself from getting up for the communion. She felt like she could receive the communion but… did it count if she wasn’t even sure she’d been baptized? Why did she only discover these things in moments like these?

She needed to talk to the Father. Or somebody in charge. But… she didn’t know anybody. She’d come alone, requesting permission to be absent this sunday morning from her guardians. Her courage had run out after entering the mass and noticing how some people were eyeing the obvious stranger in their midst.

“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

““Amen.””

She wished she had taken one of the song pamphlets. She kept tripping up the words, and she was only pretending to sing them, sounding them in her head.

The Father left through the center aisle as they sang, accompanied by the two acolytes, and Nanase felt her chance to talk to him slip by. But she wasn’t sure when else she’d have a chance to meet him, so she lingered in the shadows of the church as the churchgoers filed out. The younger ones first, of course, sick and tired of being here for over an hour. The feeling was familiar. The adults and the elderly tending to flock together in groups. Perhaps because christians weren’t very common in Japan, it seemed to her that everybody was taking their time.

“Excuse me?” A voice came from her right. A girl, one of the acolytes, greeted her with a respectful nod. She had traded her robe for a long, modest dress. Very noticeably, her quirk was perhaps too religious: her hair was composed of thorny vines. “I noticed you seemed a bit lost, can I help in any way?”

“Oh, hm, yeah, I am. I needed to talk with the Father, if that was possible. Or with somebody else who could answer some questions for me.”

“If it’s questions about our faith, I can answer them.” She provided helpfully.

Nanase fought a wince. “No, I’m… I know the faith. It’s a bit more personal? It relates to some health issues… I…” Her eyes darted to the adults still lingering.

“Would you like to talk outside?” The acolyte girl proposed. “The church has a nice garden.”

Nanase was grateful for the out. “Yeah, that’d be nice. Lead the way?” The church did have a nice garden, a curious mix of western themes in an eastern layout.

“Forgive me for not introducing myself earlier. I’m Shiozaki Ibara.” She bowed, and Nanase returned it with her own introduction. “The Father is usually busy after the service, I apologize. But if I can be of help, I will. If not, I can arrange for a meeting at another time?”

If Nanase were honest, she felt more comfortable explaining the entire amnesia situation to a girl her age than a priest. “Well, it’s a bit of an odd situation. Let me explain.” She gave her a very brief summary: she’d been found hurt and awoken with amnesia, her identity and past lost. Recently, she’d discovered she had been christian and probably catholic, but was uncertain on coming to the service. Especially considering she couldn’t be sure if she had ever actually been baptized.

“Oh my.” Shiozaki was visibly somewhat shocked. “That… that sounds awful.” She chewed her lip. “Unfortunately, I don’t think I can pronounce anything about your situation. It really should be the Father. I’m very sorry I couldn’t be of any help.”

She shook her head. “Trust me, you helped. If you hadn’t come to talk to me, I might have just given up and gone home.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Shiozaki said seriously, but with a small smile. “I am very glad I made your acquaintance. I must confess, I… was not sure of your intentions when I first approached you. I apologize for letting my personal bias cloud my actions.”

✧350 Points✧
✧Ready Roll…✧

Nanase wasn’t sure of what she’d done or not for her intentions to be under question? More importantly, she was struggling with Celestial Tamer. The energy had just been primed. Since her seizure, she’d felt like there was more energy, so the sudden spike in her head made her twitch. She needed to go to the hospital now.

Did she have enough money for a taxi? “It’s fine. Hm, look, can I give you my email and you tell me when I could come talk to the father? Because I really have to go now.”

The other girl blinked. “Of course?”

They traded contacts even as Nanase called a taxi, leaving Ibara a bit confused on the curb. The mysterious girl that had caught her attention was leaving, to the hospital if she’d heard it correctly. It seemed there really was some truth to her claims of illness. Ibara decided she’d pray for her health tonight.

---

Ah yes, my not complicated relationship with faith (meh) and religion (urgh.). I'm actually interested in exploring it a little bit, although i'm gonna say that between QUIRKS and this being the future, a lot of things in MHA's churches are likely more progressive. I flirted with the idea of a female priest, but decided not to show them in this chapter.​

Nanase has luck with green haired hero wannabes lmao​

 

1.1

Eating the powersets of three of the most powerful people in the Grand Line, the leopard man perhaps excluded, doesn’t feel like anything but a really good fruit salad. I don’t hurry to test it out either. Best case scenario, I out myself. Worst case scenario, large-scale destruction, villainy, a kill order?

No, what I do is check my smartphone. The internet is no longer locked. I was half expecting the entire smartphone to just disappear after it was done. I’m glad it hasn’t. How did I live without a smartphone back in 2011? Taylor didn’t even have that. Now I can do research on my powers without having to go to the library. I need to brush up on electromagnetism, leopard facts, and telekinetic capes.

Curious, I go to the phone’s settings. The operating system is a garbled mess of symbols instead of a name. So is the network provider, the navigational system used, the phone’s model… The information button tells me very little else. This thing appears to be a very durable, eternally charged, nigh-untraceable smartphone from the future. I’m keeping it.

It’s about time for lunch as well. I take a deep breath. I need to get this out of the way, and if nobody has figured out that I’m really not Taylor Hebert yet, then Danny won’t suddenly declare me a changeling now. I really have Taylor’s depression to thank. That and the locker incident. Personality changes will just be brushed off for now. That’s good, because I need Danny to do a few things for me, and Taylor would never talk to him like I will.

Leaving the phone in the bedside drawer, I make my way downstairs. I take my time, taking in as many details about the environment as I can. The house is small, but fairly organized. Nothing on the floor, despite some shelves looking hoards of papers and knick knacks. Danny is in the kitchen, making what appear to be sandwiches. I can only hope he doesn’t put mayonnaise in the darn things.

“Hey Taylor. Are you hungry?” He asks, and I shrug back in response. He visibly witters before putting on a smile and going back to his task. “If you want anything, just tell me.”

“Dad, we need to talk.” I sat down on the other side of the kitchen table and crossed my hands over it. “Before anything. Please.”

Danny stares at me, half-turned from the counter. “Sure, of course Taylor. What is it?” He says more energetically.

I gave more than a passing thought to this conversation. “It’s about school. I talked with the psychologist at the hospital, figured out what my options are. Can I lay out my reasoning to you?” I don’t want him interrupting me, and I know he has a temper. Now more confused, he nodded. I continue. “I don’t want to go back to Winslow. If possible, I would want to transfer to any other school, but actually that’s out of the school’s hands. Even if we claimed reparations, the school already paid for my medical bills, so…”

“It was the least they could do! I can…” Danny’s voice rises. He interrupted me.

Stupid idiot. “Please.” I do my best to keep a level voice. I don’t need a repeat of my actual family’s drama with everybody talking over each other. “Let me finish my thought process.”

The forceful tone is enough to get to him and he backs down with a sorry and a thin smile. I take a deep breath. I hope he can see how mad I fucking am and stops it. I just ate three devil fruits. I can’t have my temper go off.

“We would have to petition the school district, which could take weeks at best.” Another underfunded institution in this decaying world. “And I absolutely don’t want to involve any lawyers or any legal battles of any kind. They are stressful. And I can’t handle that kind of stress. Not even Alan Barnes. Can I trust you not to go trying to find ways to get back at the school or the bullies and just let that matter lie dead?”

Danny Hebert looks at me like he’s never seen me before. “I… Kiddo…”

“I have a solution. Please.”

“Yeah, you can trust your dad.”

I exhale, close my eyes for two seconds. “So the solution we came up with is homeschooling.” I can see Danny holding himself from wincing at the thought. “It’s a bit of an expensive option, but it’s our best bet. I’m not going back, and the fines for my truancy would be way more expensive. On the other hand, it’s only for this year before I age out of the state’s mandatory schooling, and I can just start working towards a GED at my own rhythm.”

After dominating the conversation for several minutes, Danny takes a moment to understand that the ball is now in his court. He leans forward on the table, mouth opening and closing before he takes a deep breath. As he exhales, I can see his shoulders unclenching and what must a great deal of tension leave him. He looks somewhat sad. “Okay, we can do that. You already know what we need to do and buy, right?”

“My psychologist and I worked on it. I have a list and a few websites that I can give you as well.” I used my sessions productively. Fortunately, the doctor in charge of me wasn’t a talking about feelings purist and actively helped me get more in control of my life.

“Okay.” He repeats to himself. “I’ll look that up too, then. I…” I let him have time to think. “I know you don’t want to tell me who it was but, can you at least make me understand why?”

It is a reasonable question. I don’t have a reason to not answer it. Maybe it will curb some issues in the future. Now, how to word it without implying Emma or make him go do his own research… “Because I’d lose. Bullying between girls, it’s a social, game of thrones bullshit, and I suck at it. There’s never any evidence, and if there is, obviously it was planted, or faked, or it’s not that bad.”

He interrupts. “Taylor, they…!”

“Yeah well, nobody saw it. Right?” I sigh. “Somehow, mysteriously, during an incredibly busy morning at school, there were no witnesses to a lockerful of... None, zero. Tch.” I rub my jaw. I need to unclench it. “It’s bullshit, but it’s bullshit they are very good at. I can’t win, because they got the other people on their side, or afraid enough not to speak up. On top of that, they have connections. Not just at school, maybe even with the police as well. I mean, come on.”

Danny’s expression is something between outraged and helpless. Or maybe he’s just angry. I don’t let him speak.

“And I don’t trust you… Dad. I don’t trust you to stay rational and keep your head down.” Just like that, I break something inside this man. I was harsh, but it’s true. “I know it’s because you love me, but…”

An uncomfortable silence reigns in the kitchen.

Eventually, Danny speaks up again. “How can you be sure they’ll leave you alone, even if stop going to school?”

Right on the mouche. Any normal bullies, and it would be a done deal. Emma… well. “I think they will. It’s a lot of work, going to somebody’s house just to bully them, and it’s troublesome too. I mean, it’s one thing to get schoolkids on your side, but somebody’s neighbors?” Danny’s also a community man, I infer. There’s definitely some social power there. “They’ll just find another target at school. I might have to deal with some harassment if I meet them outside, but nothing like school was.”

“Alright, alright. I’ll… start working on it then. Should I talk to the neighbors?” If he thinks that would help, sure. Then, he lays his arm around my shoulders. It’s… uncomfortable coming from a man I don’t know. But to him, it’s just a normal if awkward father-daughter moment. “You’ve grown up Taylor. I’m so proud of you.”

He doesn’t have a clue, and I’m not going to be the one to tell him.

“Thanks Dad. Love you too.” Sorry your daughter is dead.

---

Conversations are awkward. Not!Taylor gets this one out of the way as soon as she can. It's a personal thing for her that Taylor's so intent on 'not losing' to the bullies. Which is ironic considering the own levels of sunk cost fallacy she often falls into as well.​

Tried for some humanity there too, but, hm, amoral SI's only concern if Danny died would be, how do I, a minor, sustain myself. Yikes.​

 

✦✦100✦Copyright: Your creatures cannot be forcefully controlled or copied by others. They cannot be cloned, reverse-engineered or mentally dominated.
✧250 Points✧

Nanase
My quirk has drawbacks so I need to go the hospital sometimes​

Ibara
But are you alright?

Nanase
Yeah!
It wasn’t serious this time​

Celestial Menagerie NOT 3​

BeachGirl
Hey Izuku:
I’ve found religion!​

BeachHero
Ok?
Nanase, what do you mean by that?
Nanase?
!?!

The water was cold. “If you are not yet baptized, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The building was silent.

Does God exist? And if they do, do they exist according to which books and traditions?

Well, Nanase wasn’t sure. The internet and all its debates hadn’t helped.

Perhaps that made her blasphemous to be receiving the sacraments and only half-heartedly committing herself to church and Sunday mass. Regardless, everybody here had been nice, and Father Morikari had accepted to conditionally baptize her. It was fine, according to him, if she still had doubts. The path to Christ was invisible to men, but she had taken the first step and that was what mattered.

It probably helped that just going to catechism a couple of times had made Nanase, and her semi-official sponsor Ibara, realize that she was very familiar with the faith. Another point in the column that said Nanase had been a part of the church before her accident. Privately, Nanase also thought it was because the church was a minority religion in Japan. Some flexibility in everybody’s daily lives was necessary. Otherwise, how to deal with the fact that they were surrounded by non-believers?

Even Ibara, who was very excited to re-introduce Nanase to the faith, wasn’t overwhelming. Sure, she spoke about the Lord a lot, but she didn’t preach. She preached to Nanase, but to be fair, Nanase had asked for it. It also led to a series of fun conversations like: Is All Might barred from Heaven as a non-believer? Ibara had gone to the Father about that one question. The vine-haired girl was very straightforward and honest, and Nanase found that she enjoyed that personality as much as she enjoyed Izuku’s ramblings. Neither of them were too loud, just as able of quiet contemplation. She was really lucky with green-haired people.

“Do I really have to have such celebration? I barely got baptized.” Yes, it was a community moment but Nanase found herself not enjoying being the center of everybody’s attention. It was aggravated by her circumstances, which had already made the rounds several times. She’d gotten a knit cap, books, a backpack… Little things provided by her fellow christians that left her both flustered and a little emotional. Charity and mutual aid were strong within Yokohama’s catholic community.

Ibara nodded, very pumped up. “Yes, we do! We’re welcoming you within our lives with God! You’re sharing your commitment to the Lord with us, and we all celebrate and rejoice.” Then, more quietly. “But do you need some space?”

“Hm, not yet? It’s just, I’m a little embarrassed.” Something Nanase had already known about herself. Some attention was fine, but she had a definite threshold. “Hey, what about we take a picture? I want to send it to my friend.” Izuku had seemed so very confused when she’d started talking about it.

There were people more than happy to help them, and soon, Nanase had a whole new album in her phone, full of celebratory photos. Come to think of it, she mused to herself, this was her first real celebration. Even her dinner with Izuku and his mother had been a small, private affair. Now she was surrounded by people. She didn’t know them very well, but she did feel more a connection than to her caretakers and fellow parentless kids at the home. A shared background.

“Huh. I suppose you could call this family? Mmm, maybe culture.” It was heady. Somewhat reassuring, because now she didn’t feel like she was entirely alone. There was something connecting her to people who could have been strangers. A set of understandings about the world, and a willingness to help. It was also the tiniest bit scary. She didn’t want to lose it, or to disappoint them.

“Nanase! Come here, there’s cake!” Ibara was calling. She stowed away her phone. These thoughts were way too heavy. She’d rather have cake.

---

Me, researching my own religion over fifteen years since my last catechism class: I'd forgotten how ugly the queer and abortion debates could get... or the salvation debates... or... a lot. (I do miss the feeling of singing in the church.) Guess I can do a lot with catholicism in a hypothetical future where at least one in ten people is a MUTANT! ahahahah​

in future MHA, this church is gonna be a good, queer friendly place that doesn't do the whole "hate the sin love the sinner" bullshit.​

 

Vain Prayers​

You know those wish-fulfillment fantasies? It’s something like that, except you wake up and realize that no, it’s not a fantasy. Surprisingly, that’s not a good thing either.

Back when we still lived together, my brothers and I often debated which was the best superpower to have. We all wrote fanfiction, of course we did. I can’t remember what their choices were, but I always ended up debating with myself between time-stop and shadow clones. Even back then, the world was moving too fast for me.

I like my nap times, maybe because I don’t often get to have them.

So now, staring down at a rough sheet of paper with my status written down on it, it took my remaining mental strength to not make some sort of undignified noise. Because there they were.

Kage Bushin no Jutsu

Magia Erebea

Akemi Homulily

The first one was self-explanatory, although in her haste, my goddess had not transcribed anything but the name. I wondered how handseals would translate, if they even would. The second one, well. Magia Erebea is, in my most subjective opinion, just plainly the most awesome, full of potential, broken magic ever. If I had to choose one spell, not power, to know, this would be the one. Unfortunately, my goddess was freaking out about it and had just scribbled the last one’s name without any more clues. Something about a hole in my soul.

I was more worried about the last one, honestly. Puella magi were not a fun prospect in any way. Holes in my soul? I’ll be lucky to keep the whole thing if this spell worked like I thought it might.

So how had I ended up here? In the second-floor storeroom of a bookshop in Orario, holding a piece of paper with the most ridiculous things written on it, while short but stacked Hestia herself paced around me, biting the ends of her hair in distress? I don’t know.

Let’s go back a couple of days.

+​

There’s a village in the Beor mountains, just a day or so away from Orario. Apparently, since that’s where I woke up. It’s fairly isolated, but actually, a fair number of ex-adventurers ended up retiring there. By which I mean, the washed up and drop outs. Beor is as monster invested as it gets near Orario and its bustling commerce. Pros, nobody will question my origin story. Cons, it’s really not a good place.

So I came to Orario. What else was I supposed to do? I didn’t even have a plan then. There were absolutely no clues that I had three overpowered spells somewhere in my soul. I was willing to start from the ground up as an apprentice or goffer.

I still went to the Guild first. There’s a proper order to these things. And Hestia Familia sounded too good to pass up. It was probably my only chance at the adventurer gig.

It turned out that Hestia was still looking for her first member, something I picked up from a list of gods with no or small familias that were recruiting. Curious about the timeline, I inquired off the cuff, with the acting skills of a somebody who spent half their life hiding their screw ups from their family, if the members of familias were public knowledge.

The rank ups were. It stood to logic that that too did. And it did, even if consulting the books was an incredibly time-consuming process considering they are literally brick sized tomes. No, there were no convenient things like indexes, much less supernatural search bars. Naturally, it only had names, aliases, level and race (and sometimes not even that).

I looked through it. Loki’s, in their resplandecent glory with a lot of high levels, Freya’s too. Everything looked fine. But then I looked through Hephaestus, and I couldn't find him. So I looked again. I checked the other familias, and nothing.

Welf Crozzo of Hephaestus.

Liliruca Arde of Soma.

Yamato Mikoto of Takemikazuchi.

Sanjouno Haruhime of Ishtar.

Their names weren’t there. They were not where they were supposed to be.

By that point I looked sufficiently freaked out that I attracted the attention of a guild member. I made something up about not finding people I was looking for. So he helped me. He clearly was more savvy than me because he did find Mikoto and Lili. In the obituaries.

One reported as dead by her disgrace of an excuse of a familia. Went with a party, party didn’t return, she’s dead now does that mean a few less members will lower our rankings and taxes? At least the other’s body had returned, and her family had given her a grave with all the other adventurers.

I didn’t hold a lot of hope for the other three members of Hestia Familia.

There’s a weight to knowing you doomed something. Presumptuous maybe, to think I have that much control over my fate, or theirs. But people don’t just pop into fantasy worlds without something. I didn’t know what, but something.

I moped for a few hours. Found the cemetery, hunted around for the only grave that proved these people had existed, dropped two weedy flowers on it and moped a lot more. I still wasn’t sure if I considered these people real or characters. And my level of emotional attachment to them was also frail, another problem I also had back on Earth. But I did feel a bit of duty, mixed with some self-preservation. I wasn’t sure how much this would change the timeline, mostly because I didn’t know the timeline. I really should have not based my media consumption on what fics I read.

Maybe I could do something. Maybe, maybe, I was capable of doing something. Really maybe… I should do something? Not sure.

However, right now there was a human who felt lost and desperately needed a roof over their head. And there was a goddess who was really lonely out there.

There were a lot of potato puff stalls in Orario. In the main streets you could have four or five to block. The sun slowly setting, I started seriously eyeing the gods and goddesses I could see out and about. Something about them just drew your eye. Still undecided on my agnostic feelings about that whole topic. Gods here didn’t have the best reputation, not with the people who actually interacted a bit with them.

Then I stumbled upon Takemikazuchi, merrily garbed in a server’s uniform, politely asking for my potato puff order. I stumbled. My heart skipped two beats. It was him. A Japanese man with a traditional hairstyle, deceptively broad-shouldered, calloused hands that didn’t at all retract from his air of general divinity and perfection.

I’d always thought he sort of looked like a dad.

“Oh. I… ah.” I am so sorry. So sorry but my head needs to be in the game. “S- Lord God, would you know where I could find Lady Hestia?”

Takemikazuchi blinked, then gave me a more attentive glance over. My spine straightened without permission as I stood almost at parade rest. “I do. What is your business with Hestia?”

“I heard she’s looking for Familia members, right? And I’m looking for a god. A Familia. What- yeah.” Do not ‘whatever’ in front of a martial god. He could kill a person with those tongues in his hand. “I heard good things about her.”

“Really?” The god perked up, then immediately got suspicious. “From who?”

Hestia had good friends, but this was really underscoring how bad her reputation was in Orario. The dirt poor, lazy, mooching goddess. Was it an accurate representation of Hestia at this point in the timeline? Well yes. It was also an incomplete one. Hestia had depths. Or so I hoped.

Takemikazuchi had probably been expecting me to either lie or tell him the name of a god, Hermes’ faker face came to mind, an adventurer… people who would cruelly play a prank on Hestia. The truth was: “Honestly, I just read about her. Legends, myths and other... stories. She seems like a good person… goddess.”

“Oh.” I had surprised Takemikazuchi, but pleasantly so. “Is that so. Well, I am almost finishing for the day. Give me just a moment!”

In five minutes, Takemikazuchi had wrangled an early leave from his boss and was directing me through a set of backstreets down from West Main, where I’d found him, all the way to North Main. We passed through several blocks in disrepair and dark alleys with suspicious individuals but Takemikazuchi exuded an aura that, beyond godly, told me and everybody that he could and would punch somebody’s teeth in with their own fists. Just as impressive was how calm he managed to keep me as he interrogated me. All the way, a good twenty minutes minimum, he kept a steady but spaced out stream of questions about my background and motivations.

In hindsight, if I hadn’t given him answers he liked, he could have taken any turn in those crooked streets and kept us walking for however long he wished. Or, you know, pinned me to the wall and squeezed the truth out of me.

As it was, he probably caught on to my evasiveness, but I restricted myself to the truth and a few uncomfortable no comment kind of answers. Like, I gave him the name of my birth town, it wasn’t like he would have ever heard of it or would find it in a map, but I also preferred not to tell how big of a town it was. Keeping my motivations as honest as I possibly could might have moved him a bit. I was being entirely truthful when I said it was a mix of desperation, ambition, and guilt.

Takemikazuchi didn’t ask me about what. I could hope he would forget. Let a person dream.

We did manage to catch Hestia just at the endtail of her workday. Hestia’s figure was as… existing as I was expecting, and she was as short as the shortest person I’d known in person. In short, pun intended, she was eye-level with my collarbone. I noticed she didn’t have her signature bells on. Maybe those came later?

“Hello.” Takemikazuchi had given me a push and now we stood face to face, a grinning japanese god a few strides away. “Hi. So I heard you liked a Familia.” Social anxiety, why? “I mean, I heard you were looking to start a Familia! Can I… join, Lady Hestia?”

The goddess looked up at me, eyes wide and mouth open. She looked between me and Takemikazuchi. “I didn’t do anything, they were already looking for you when they came to me.” He headed that off before Hestia could accuse him.

“Really?” She turned to me.

“Really really.”

“I’m a poor goddess.”

“I have 15 vals and the clothes on my back.” I’d found two coins on the ground and that had been the luckiest I’d been all day. … I don’t have enough money for chicken nuggets, I mean, potato puffs.

“I work at a jagamarukun stand all day.”

“Okay?”

“I’m lazy and- I’m not good at anything in special.”

Girl, if only you knew me. “Yep.”

“And you want to be my Familia?”

“I do.”

Then I almost had my ribs crushed by a wrestling-worthy hug, and before I could recover my breath she was dragging me away. I threw Takemikazuchi a wave of thanks before we were out of sight. Running through the streets of late afternoon Orario, Hestia dragged me to a bookshop where she had promised she would start her Familia.

That brought us back to the now.

+​

“Goddess, goddess. Goddess Hestia! Calm the... calm down!” I grabbed her by the shoulders and pointedly did not shake her. Fearful, tearful eyes looked up at me.

“But, but!”

“I am not dying at this precise moment. Let’s take a deep breath and think this all through, okay?”

A cavernous sound was heard. As if on cue, both Hestia and I looked down. First at our bellies then at each other’s. I had eaten stale bread for breakfast and kept the one carrot I’d been given for lunch. I had also trekked several kilometers from the mountains to the closest village, slept in the back of a night convoy, literally on top of a bale of hay. I was starving, my whole body had declared sore was its default state, and only Orario’s public fountains kept me awake and hydrated.

“And maybe eat something?”

As soon as we got home to the church Hestia lived in, and now me as well, we could discuss and test my very unexpected spells. What actually happened was that I ate potato puffs until I was full and felt like crying about it. I laid my head down on my arms and fell asleep on the table. I don’t remember that part.

I woke up at the ungodly hour of sunrise, on the bed. No boots, but still fully clothed, with a lamprey called Hestia hugging me from behind. Her sleep looked peaceful. I disentangled myself like somebody who has two younger brothers who like suffocating people- I mean cuddling. I regretted getting up, as my blistered feet met the floor. Limping to the couch, I sat down and grimaced as I saw I was bleeding a bit through my socks.

I was accustomed to walking long distances, but that’s on modern pavement and modern shoes. My clothes had been translated into a lower technological level, and they just didn’t fit me exactly like mine had, even if they looked similar enough. That’s fine for say, my trousers, but for shoes it became the equivalent of breaking in new shoes by power walking through a day of standing retail work.

God...dess? Bless thick socks.

Unwilling to part my butt from the couch and doubting Hestia would have paper and pencils lying around, I settled in to mentally review the last 48 hours. Setting aside my entrance, stage left, there were a couple of things I had to think about.

First there were the timeline changes. Bell was… I wasn’t quite sure he was responsible for saving the city? I’d read that he was somewhere. But he definitely was super important for the xenos, whose arc I hadn’t read, and apparently for Ais. And she was a topic better not touched so I could only hope that Bell’s protagonist aura could be replaced by… something. Lili was actually not essential for anything outside Bell’s adventures. Sorry, but true. Mikoto either. Welf, I thought he had something to do with Ares’ country. Who had invaded. That was another thing I had not read about. And finally Haruhime. It was awful to think but she was probably in a better position dead than in Ishtar. It was really awful, but it also wouldn’t impact the timeline as far as I remembered.

So in conclusion! There was nothing I could do, probably, and maybe even nothing I should do. I’d given Hestia her first familia member and realistically that was the only amend I could make.

The other thing, a far larger topic, was me and my future. Or rather, mine and Hestia's future. We were a household now, in many, nay. In every way. My eyes skittered across the cracked ceiling, the holes, the spiders. I did not think about the centipedes. The list started composing itself in my head: finances and the division of wealth (marriage was an institution I'd read somewhere), registration with the guild, classifications, taxes, aid… then spending priorities like food, equipment, home repairs, clothes, soap…

I kept at it, my mind fluidly transitioning from the immediate necessities and practicalities to future planning. And therefore, my spells, with all their incredible potential but also all their potential drawbacks. Ultimately, I didn’t know enough. I was nose deep into overly complex ways of testing each parameter of my spells when Hestia started making waking up noises.

They were cute waking up noises, and it was cute watching her snuggle deeper into the covers. I wanted to sleep in too, but I’d forced myself to get up. In short, if I couldn’t, neither could she.

“Hey Lady Hestia! Good morning! Wake up!” I cheerily called, louder and louder.

“Mwah? Huh? Ah!” I watched her go from startled to confused to effusive. Her eyes sparkled as she looked at me. I felt my grin turn a bit awkward. Hestia’s wholesome expectations...what did I do to deserve them? The bare minimum?

Well, when in doubt, deny, deflect and bury your problems until you have to fix everything at the last minute. “Sorry about that, but I think it’s getting pretty late,” I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was half past seven. A good enough hour for a retail worker, provided you didn’t have to take three or four different busses to work. “And I wasn’t sure when your work starts.”

As an aside, it’s incredibly convenient that I can read, speak and understand the local language because it is not english and it does not use the latin alphabet.

She shot up. “Oh no! I’m- wait! It wasn’t a dream! I have a Familia!” She pointed at me. I couldn’t help but smile back stupidly. Then her face fell. One-hundred to zero in point one seconds flat. “Y-y-your magic! That wasn’t a dream either! Oh no, oh no.”

Five minutes were spent explaining to Hestia that no, I felt fine. I hadn’t tried to use my spells, because I wasn’t a complete idiot, so nothing had happened and likely would not happen. Unless I used my spells, and that was what I wanted to talk to her about.

“Well,” Hestia declared as she plopped down on the couch, arms crossed, “I’m not going to go to work today! We need to figure out your magic and besides, it’s our first day as a Familia! We should spend it together!”

I was sitting sideways on the couch, facing her, and I objected. “Well, actually maybe it would be better if you went to work, Hestia. Right now, you are the Familia’s only breadwinner and I’m… well, I’m really not helping.”

Hestia closed her eyes and groaned. “Ah, that is a really weird feeling, being the one with money…” In yesterday’s panic, she hadn’t really noticed how dirt poor I really was. Not that I had particularly ragged clothes or anything that would make you think of a bum… but I literally didn’t own anything but what I had on my body. It led to funny things like having to wait naked until my one set of clothes was washed and dried. “It can’t be helped, I’ll have to break out the emergency food money to buy you clothes.”

Oy, oy, oy! “Wait a moment, if you’re not going to work and you’re spending the emergency food money, how are we going to eat tonight!”

“We can handle one night without dinner!”

“Hell no!”

Hestia’s job was enough to feed her and save some. Nothing else. And when she wasn’t forced to spend what she saved on emergency repairs, like buying a new dress, new soap… she spent it on alcohol. Happy hour. I was not a happy penguin when I forced her to admit that.

“You’re just like Hephaestus!!” “Apparently that’s what you need!!” “I don’t deserve this!” “We’ll see about that!”

Somehow, we’d ended up with me still sitting on the couch while I lectured her on the evils of alcohol, namely how it sucked your wallet dry. Hestia kneeled on the floor, chastised.

“God-s, we need to get a handle on our finances like, right now.” I pulled her up and sat her next to me. Darn puppy eyes. “And while we're at that, we should talk about what we want out of the Familia more concretely.”

Hestia gave me a peculiar look. “What do you want out of our Familia?” Before I could get properly startled at the change in maturity, she continued. “I want our Familia to write their own familia myth, like in the books. To have adventures and their name and renown proclaimed by everybody! And then I want everybody to gather and have a feast and tell stories and be happy together.” A fantasy where everybody would come back victorious, where Hestia would watch them grow and never be alone.

“That sounds nice.” Shame that Bell likely was dead, no? “I would like that.”

She pouted. “That didn’t answer my question, mister!”

That’s right, because I was avoiding thinking of how pathetic I was. Still, she waited as I thought about what I wanted. Since I had to be honest, I told her most of what was going on in my head. “I want to survive. I want to live comfortably but also to go on adventures. I want to make up for some stuff and become a better person. I want to be strong and looked up to and good and I don’t want to be alone in the world.” I like my space. I like being left to my devices. It’s selfish of me, but I do need an anchor and without my brothers, my father…

A small shoulder bumped into mine and I looked down to see Hestia’s serious eyes. “You’re not alone.”

That was almost true. “Thank you. Sorry for being such a downer.”

“Nope!” She rejected my apology.

We squabbled lightly back and forth, mood lightening up as I apologized and she insisted me being honest about my feelings was good, which it was not! I got the upper hand though, by bringing us back round to money.

+​

“So, in conclusion,” I taped the pencil on a sheet full of scribbled out words and arrows pointing at numbers. “Hestia Familia will have mostly joint assets. So, buildings and other communal assets belong to the familia, under Hestia’s name. Along with food, water, basic hygiene products, that will make sure the familia ensures elemental… no what’s the name… elementary, ah, fundamental. Fundamental necessities for all its members. This will be paid for by a piggybank, the familia… funds, yeah. Each member, goddess included, will contribute three-quarters of their earnings to the funds. The remaining quarter will be personal money to spend however they want.” I was forgetting something, what was it?

“Cheapskate, miser, val counter!” Hestia pounded on my knees weakly.

Oh yeah! “Taxes are also paid communally, obviously. Equipment may be paid for by the familia under the discretion of the quartermaster, which will also be in charge of the rest of the finances, and the captain, me. Considering the familia’s state.”

“Scrooge! Hoarder!”

“Discussions about spendings will be allowed, of course. And this document will be put up for revision in… three months unless something spectacular happens. What do you think, Goddess?”

A pathetic pile of divinity clung to my legs, eyes tearful and betrayed. “You said you hated finances and management.”

“I do. Or at least, I hated the way they were done back home.” Capitalist hellhole. Too many weird rules that only served to enrich the rich, punish the poor and give people excuses to fire employees. “This is just common sense and honestly, I am just throwing the numbers around. At least it fits in one single sheet.”

Hestia grumbled but sat back down next to me. If she wanted more pocket money, she shouldn’t have said she wanted her familia to provide for its members. Society lives on taxes!

“Okay, we’re done. No more of this talk.” She grabbed our fledgeling charter from my hands and replaced it with the bare status sheet from yesterday. “This is more important!”

The three spells that broke all the rules, in-universe and out, stared back at me. I wondered…

A traitorous finger poked me on my side and I jumped, a giggled half-strangled like a drowning cat escaping my lips. “DON’T Do that!!”

The goddess who I had been tormenting smirked evilly. “Are you… ticklish?”

“No.” “Liar~!” “I meant- No like- Don’t Even Think About It! Goddess! Goddess!?”

The following five minutes were not pleasant. Was I asking for it? I maintain that no, it was a completely inappropriate and excessive response from Hestia. The breach of trust was deeply hurtful and Hestia stopped once I started crying. I can handle pain just fine, but suffocation by laughter is upsetting, let’s say. My goddess, now apologetic, played with the status sheet in her hands. I could hear the paper bending and crinkling, but I couldn’t see her, since I was sitting on the floor on the other side of the couch.

I looked up. Hestia peered over the back of the couch. “Let’s not do that ever again.”

“So…”

“My spells. Let’s get back to that thorny issue.”

Hestia hummed. “Actually, I noticed… but you didn’t seem too surprised when you saw your status.”

I sighed. “Believe me Lady Hestia, I had no idea I was going to receive those spells. I sure dreamed about overpowered magic and a protagonist’s power but something like those?” I threw my hands in the air. “Not even close.”

Now Hestia was bending over the back of the couch, her head closer to mine. “You know what these spells do? I didn’t have the chance to look too deeply. I was just transcribing your initial status when I noticed that this one… could hurt you.” She tapped my shoulder. “I should check again.”

I nodded. “Definitely. They might actually be different from what I think they are.” I could feel the goddess’ curiosity rolling off her in waves. Also, her worry. I had really chosen well, this goddess. “They’re spells from stories I read back home. The Shadow Doppelganger Technique, that created solid copies of the user, signature of the number one unpredictable ninja. Magia Erebea, invented by a vampire, allowed you to make any magic your own. And Akemi Homura. That’s the name of a heroine who could control time itself and used her shield to save her… person she loved.”

Hestia’s eyes were wide open. “Maybe I should check the blessing now.” Yeah, I had a feeling she would after listening to that.

And since I was going to have to take off my shirt, “Might as well wash all of my clothes now then. If we want to have them dry at a reasonable time and make it to the Guild.” It would take some time considering it was the middle of winter, if sunny. “Plus, you’ll have to be the one to hang them outside since I’ll be, well.” Lacking in clothes.

So I started very normally undoing the laces on my shirt and trousers, only for Hestia to loudly splutter and turn away, blushing furiously. “Y-y-you can’t just get n-naked just like that!” It was literally nothing she hadn’t seen before and I told her so. “I’m a virgin goddess! I don’t g-go to de-depraved parties like other gods! My eyes are virginal too!” More quietly she mumbled something that sounds like, “Is this what other gods do? Isn’t it going too fast?”

“Okay,” I stopped and stared at her, turned away but occasionally looking over her shoulder to see what I was doing, “that makes no sense. Which part of this,” I gestured to the entire room, “made you think we were going to even touch? Let alone have like… sex. We are not. Is this a …” Greek “god thing?”

I knew Hestia had deserved to go to horny jail in canon, but: One, that was for Bell, which I was very much not. And two, she didn’t usually act like this.

Hestia’s face had reached critical levels and looked redder than a tomato. “A man can’t just show a virgin goddess his body like t-”

“Wait what?”

“What what?

I stared at her in such complete bafflement that even the wind seemed to have disappeared. “Hestia. I am a woman.”

Silence. “Eh?”

“Don’t ‘eh?’ me. I don’t have a bra, you saw my tits yesterday.”

“No I didn’t, you had your back to me the whole time!”

“Dude, my chosen name is Nana. Na-na.”

“I thought that was your family name!”

“I have long hair! I have a girl’s voice!”

“In a ponytail! Lots of men have long hair! And your voice is fine for a boy too!”

“Oh my goooood…”

I couldn’t believe I was actually this non-binary. Ever since I had stopped cutting my hair like a soldier, my ability to confuse people about my gender had diminished severely. I could still make people look twice and frown in confusion, but Hestia being 100% convinced that I was a man after seeing me half-naked and cuddling me during the night? Something didn’t add up. My goddess insisted she’d never seen somebody as flat as me (she’d choked on her laugh and gone very pale, dismayed? At me being flatter than Loki). I pointed at my throat and asked about my lack of facial hair and adam’s apple. And found out that, apparently secondary sex characteristics work differently here.

I misspoke. What I actually mean is that, among human men, they either are very prominent or they barely exist. And women, of course, always have… titties. The less was said about sex dimorphism in elves and pallums, the better. As a mostly androgynous female wearing pants, I was indistinguishable from a quarter of the male population.

Rule of thumb: if it doesn’t have B-cups, it’s a dude. The joys of living in an anime?

Okay, let’s get back to what people really want to know. How overpowered I was (not).

+​

My clothes were drying, I was comfortably wrapped in a warm, cozy blanket, and Hestia had spent at least one hour trying to make sense of my spells. There were several sheets of paper with different translations and amendments spread on the table. An adventurer’s status is written on their back in divine hieroglyphs. Although puny mortals can learn how to read the divine script, gods just transcribe and translate it for us. What I hadn’t known is that even gods can get stumped by the very blessing they gave.

Hestia had been incredibly vague about it, but the gist I got was that the divine hieroglyphs were a higher form of divinity than gods themselves. Or at least, gods with their arcanum sealed. The script looked like an alphabet to the untrained eye but it actually read like said hieroglyphs and worked on a base of symbols equaling ideas. It also had layers only gods could perceive and had to interpret.

So there were several possible translations for several different parts of my spells. Hestia looked like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be happy or panicking.

“Okay, let’s put these two aside for now and focus on the simple one.” I pushed most of the sheets aside and took the only spell that hadn’t made Hestia want to cry.

[ Kage Bushin no Jutsu ]
Multiplication magic that creates physical but fragile copies of the user. The user remains connected to all copies.

There were other notes written down. Different translations like shadow doppelganger or shadow clone technique, the fact that it didn’t have a chant at all and the hieroglyphs had drawn this vague hand shape here, how expensive it felt to Hestia and properties she thought the spell might have.

“Looks about right. In the stories, Shadow Clones could take a few hits depending on how much chakra was used to create them. They also transferred all their memories back to the user when they were destroyed, making them great scouting and training tools. The clones looked independent, but they coordinated effortlessly with Naruto so it could very well be that he was more or less in control of them.”

“It’s not a super-powerful attack or a legendary healing magic,” said Hestia, “but I can see how useful and incredible it is. Other gods would definitely want to take you away if they got even a whiff of what this can really do.”

I nodded grimly. “Especially the evil, unscrupulous sort of gods. Kage Bushin is a top-tier spying tool. Heck, any exploration familia or even the guild. Being able to check ahead for monsters and traps without risk is a gamechanger."

“I’m not sure if I'm the luckiest or the unluckiest goddess to ever exist. Ahaha." Hestia said spiritlessly.

"We're going to have to lay low." In other words we were doomed but alas. "Anyway, it's not like this spell doesn't have some very real potential drawbacks. The story always described it as very expensive chakra-wise, so I'm not even sure I'll be able to cast it without passing out. And the memories from the clones could overwhelm me and even fry my brain." Now Hestia was staring at me again. "On the other hand there are fun probabilities like exploding clones and weapon duplicates."

"I'm starting to think you enjoy this, Nana."

"There are a lot of things about this situation that I'm enjoying. "

"Urrgg." She scowled and mock hit me in the arm. "Just tell me about the original story you read this from, you scoundrel."

I winced, regretting promising that I would tell her the stories I knew. "Naruto is at least fifty volumes long. How about I tell you the beginning and how he got his ninja headband? So, imagine a city, like Orario but there are large trees everywhere and there’s a cliff. It's a very important cliff, because that's where the faces of the Hokages are carved!"

I got into the rhythm of storytelling fairly easily. It didn’t take much to have Hestia hanging on my words. I still had Naruto's first episode and chapter engraved in my mind and the fact was that I loved Naruto. Always will, some part of me. And by the end of today, so would Hestia.

+​

“This one… it’s not a good magic, Nana.”

I winced. “... You’re not wrong goddess. It’s not evil or anything but it is really dangerous magic. It’s the one I understand the least too.”

[ Magia Erebea ]
Stagnet - Complexio - Supplementum Pro Armationem
Forbidden Magic that devours everything. Grants the user many times the power of absorbed magic. Anima Erosion. Animus Erosion.

“You shouldn’t ever use it. I forbid it.” She said, small hands around one of my wrists.

I tapped the paper instead. Besides that, there were several translations and scribbles of what Hestia had thought might be other activation words and strange details. She’d dug deep, trying to find as much as she could about this one in particular. “Anima and animus erosion worries me. I’ve heard it somewhere before, but I can’t remember where.”

“It means something that destroys your very sense of self.” Hestia’s voice was harsh by my side. There was a reason I was keeping my eyes glued to the paper. “It attacks your mind, spirit and soul!”

“That makes sense.” I paused. “In the story, to learn how to use this magic, Negi had to face his inner darkness. He fought through a magic dream in which he died over and over again until he overcame that darkness inside of him. If he gave up or took too long, he either died or lost his ability to use magic forever.”

“Nana!” Hestia grabbed my hair and pulled so that I had to look at her. Her eyes were red and her voice reedier. “And knowing all that, you still want to use it? No, that’s stupid! And you’re not stupid!”

I grit my teeth and almost spat the words out. “I don’t know if I’ll have the choice. The dungeon, hell! The world is dangerous! If I’m going to survive, I have to use all I have. I can’t hold back and Magia Erebea is my greatest force-multiplier.”

Hestia didn't release my eyes. “You don’t want to use it. Why are you insisting on this, Nana?”

Gods and their stupid ability and intuition! I forced my head out of her grip. A few ripped hairs would be worth not having to meet her eyes anymore. “... I want the power of Erebea. That magic was… so cool. You know it was invented by a ten year old child? A kid forcibly turned into a monster that became monstrously strong so she could survive in a world that hated her for no reason. Magia Erebea works by absorbing a spell and fusing it with your soul. It’s crazy powerful and crazy dangerous. The spell itself begins to feed on your soul and lifeforce and whatever else.”

Hestia just waited.

“I am afraid of using it. The more I think about it, the less simple it becomes. I’m scared of what I’ll have to fight, and I’m almost certain I’d lose.” I wasn’t delusional. A young adult from the modern world that had rarely faced hardships? A mediocre person by all accounts? I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. “And then I’d be taken over by dark magic and literally turn into a monster.”

I felt Hestia’s touch on my shoulder and felt my eyes prickle with wetness. “So don’t. We don’t need this spell. It’s forbidden after all.”

I had a premonition then that I would use it. Of course I did.

+​

The final spell wasn't actually any better for Hestia’s blood pressure. “Honestly, Lady Hestia, by this point, I was expecting you to exert your divine authority. I mean...”

Hestia opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again and then whimpered, suddenly looking very defeated. “I almost did but I can feel it in the blessing. That magic is not against the laws of the lower world. It’s cheating, almost! But only almost! It’s not against the rules or in violation of the laws.” She bit her lip. “Thank goodness. I… don’t want to think about what I might have had to do.”

Me neither, boss, me neither.

[ Akemi Homura ]
Creates a lost heroine’s shield with the ability to stop the flow of time and store items inside. Its durability and abilities depend on the user’s magic stat. Sacrificing a shield will allow for a chance to change fate.

This hieroglyphic translation was apparently the hardest because, according to Hestia, the hieroglyphs and their meanings kept changing. The name, especially, varied between Akemi Homura, Homulily and other variants that included Nutcracker. I was appropriately terrified. Hestia had checked for me though, and nothing in the spell indicated any sort of corruption, turning, transformation. It was one ‘simple’ spell that just created the shield.

So we only had to deal with the possibility of time travel and whatever complications, likely divine in nature, could arise from it. It was a very big ‘only’.

We were probably going to have to test this magic before anything else. Hestia had been freaking out, again, about the possibility of other gods noticing me messing around with time. And not just the ones in the lower world, no! We also had to worry about the ones upstairs.

“Okay so, the way I understand, the shield is actually something like a sand hourglass.” I explained. “Homura could stop time by halting the flow of sand in it, like stopping an hourglass by putting it horizontal. And she could reverse time by turning it around, just like an hourglass too. I never quite got the exact mechanics of it, like if she could only turn time at that one spot in the timeline, or how the sand in the shield got there or if it represented the universal time flow or just something more local and a bunch of other little details. I do know how the time-stop works functionally though.” Through direct and contiguous contact, essentially.

“That’s not a power any mortal should have.” Hestia said, and to me she sounded more serious than usual. I turned from the paper back to her. “It’s almost… blasphemous. Tell me about the story of Akemi Homura.”

“... it’s funny that you mentioned blasphemy. Akemi Homura’s story… well, she’s just the most important character in Madoka’s story. Kaname Madoka was just a normal girl. And for her, it all started with one very strange dream, a dream with a girl fighting a monster, and a small white creature with red eyes…”

+​

Somehow, it was already mid-afternoon when we were done. In between debating and writing down what we should do to test my spells, eating more potato salad, and waiting for my clothes to dry, we’d wasted almost the entire day. A good chunk of it had been spent storytelling. Hestia really loved stories and she wasn’t just interested in listening about other things I’d read or watched.

I happened to go on a bit of a rant about the lack of good character writing in Naruto when it came down to girls, which led to things I’d have written differently, and suddenly fanfiction! Ironic, I know. But it seemed that Hestia and I would get along like a house on fire.

Since Hestia hadn’t gone to work, I considered taking care of the Familia’s registration, but there was something we ought to check before we made any moves at all. Before I even considered taking one single step in my adventures. After all… would anything matter if I got smited from existence?

Hestia was biting her nails, hair raised.

I stood ready in the middle of the room.

I was not ready.

You Only Live Once, probably.

I closed my eyes, right hand over my left forearm. Inhale, exhale. My heartbeat got progressively louder as I focussed. There was no chant, so it was all down to instinct. Ba-dump, ba-dump. I was looking for an energy for which I had no reference. I was a blind man trying to swim towards a patch of dyed water. ba-dump ba-dump. And the waters were shark-infested. This was a horrible idea, I should have started with the shadow clones. No, I had to focus. ba-dump ba-dump. Breathe and think of nothing but yourself. Self-awareness. Your body, a machine constantly there. baa-dump baa-dump. Your mind, freely letting thoughts go. baaa-dump baaa-dump.

My soul, touched by divinity.

baaa-dump baaa-dump

tick tock tick tock

ba aa-du mp ba aa-du mp

t ic k t o ck t ic k t o ck

The power to protect. A shield. I could picture that. I’d held shields before, felt the way they dragged my arm down. Keep your hands up. Guard.

b a a d u m p b a a d u m p

t i c k t o c k t i c k t o c k

The power over time. An hourglass, a grandfather clock, a sundial. I could envision that too. Still-motion. Photographs. Moments frozen in time. The steady beat of a pendulum, the murmur of sand sliding against glass, a shadow moving back and forth over carved stone. A film being rewound.

b a a d u m p b a a d u m p b a a d u m p b a a d u m p b a a d u m p b a a d u m p

Why was… my heartbeat so… loud? Why was it so steady? Why couldn’t I… control it?

No! I yelled in my mind, but my eyes would not open. This was not right. My breathing continued unhindered and steady, to the rhythm of the universe, despite the panic building inside of me. Every beat, I lost something. Some warmth, some form of… me, was being drained away. I got colder and colder, yet I did not shiver, or felt the need to do so. It continued to flow out of me and very soon, I was all tapped out. Then, the shakes began, rocking my bones, my body, my head.

It was the pain of a migraine, that awful sort of pressure that just did not want to go away, leaving me stuck in bed and crying in frustration. It was the pain of food poisoning, kneading my stomach and intestine with large claws. It was the flu with all of its weight pressing me down to the floor while poking my body to move just to get away from the discomfort. It was like collapsing after running under the summer sun outside, no water, no breath, my heartbeat in my throat, my ears, my eyes.

This spell was too much. That was my last thought before the world fell into incoherence.

Not unconsciousness. Not until I felt it around my wrist. Only then did I fall into blissful oblivion.

---

This is 99% abandoned.​

Yeah, I just wrote this months ago to get the juice flowing. It's 100% wish fulfillment, but you can see some places where I had the bare-bones idea of a plot. You can also see here why RunLess is classified as an SI-adjacent story, there's a lot of similarities between how "I" here and the RunLess version see the world and interact with Hestia.​

Anyway, not planning on continuing this any time, parts of these ideas having been moved to other projects. So here it is, for future perusal.​

 

|1|

The colorful neon lights on the other side of the horizontal blinders created stark contrasting lines inside the hotel room. His form broken by the black shadows and lines of light, a boy sat on the single bed. He let out a sigh and rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

'This is... seriously a problem.' Truthfully, to call his situation a problem was the same as saying the ocean was just a bit of water. In his free hand, he held a suicide note. The note was a rant on the life of Hisashi Tetsuya until this day, a two page long essay on why he had decided to end his life.

Tetsuya had been a child with big dreams. His parents had passed away when he’d been young and he lived with an uncaring uncle. He’d always wanted to be a hero, like Endeavor, and defeat villains. Unfortunately, when his quirk had manifested, it had been as a green gem embedded in his flesh that did nothing. He could move it around over his body, but nothing else. With a weak quirk unfit for heroics, his dreams had apparently been shattered. But Tetsuya knew his quirk was more than that, instinctively feeling that the orb was gathering energy and would reveal its true power when he really needed it. In between this strange belief and his strong personality, he spent his time getting into fights and being mocked. Nobody believed him about his quirk, but it turned out to be true. On his eighteenth birthday, his quirk finally fully manifested.

In the form of a shield.

Not even a big shield or a special shield. In fact, now Tetsuya couldn’t get rid of it, and on top of that, it hurt him like a shock collar if he tried to pick up any weapon to use with it. His strength or speed had not improved. After years of being labeled as basically quirkless, all he’d gotten was just that shield.

The universe had been laughing at him, his dreams were finally shattered, once again the object of ridicule.

‘And so you ended here, with a pilfered bottle of sleeping pills.’ The person inhabiting Tetsuya’s body thought. ‘And you succeeded for once. But really… killing yourself over a childhood dream? 99% of people don’t pursue those and they don’t throw themselves off the roof.’ Tetsuya hadn’t even been heavily bullied or had an abusive guardian. His life hadn’t been all roses, but he scowled at the thought that the kid had given up because he just couldn’t accept not being a hero. ‘He could have become a firefighter or something if he really wanted to save people.’

With another long-suffering sigh, he got up and stretched. The last thing he remembered was falling asleep on the train. His night classes were slowly killing him and he’d nodded off like a baby. He’d woken up to an unfamiliar ceiling, soon followed by an unfamiliar body and a weird object attached to his arm.

Evidently, he’d been transported into another world.

‘I read too much manga, but it’s true.’ Not only that, as he got his bearings together and explored the clues left on the hotel room, he recognized the world he was in and the shield strapped to his arm. ‘That new Hero Academia manga that I hadn’t caught up with, and the awful anime with the cool Shield Hero power.’

The former, he was only familiar with the first two volumes, skimmed at a bookstore a few months ago. They’d been on his to-read list. The world was interesting, and he’d gotten the gist of it online. ‘So I sort of know what the world is like, but no clues about the plot.’

The latter, he’d quit after two episodes and spoiling himself about the rest of it. The protagonist’s power was interesting and cool, but he was not on board with a plot that was ok with slavery, torture and rape if it was done to the wrong people. ‘Just thinking of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. At least I know and like how the Shield works.’

“First, I should test if it really is the Legendary Shield.” He told himself. ‘Maybe just thinking will do. Status Window?’

Before his eyes, a semi-transparent white window displaying his statistics opened. It moved with his vision, just an overlay. “... It actually works.” He’d been only half-expecting it to work.

|| Hisashi Tetsuya (##### #####) ||

|| HP 100 :: SP 5 :: ATK 1 :: SATK 1 :: DEF 30 :: SDEF 20 :: MOV 10 ||

|| Legendary Hero’s Shield :: DEF+10 ||

‘I don’t know if those were the original’s statistics but… it reminds me of another classic game.’ It almost felt like it was plagiarizing from yet another source, but then again, wasn’t he already in a sort of crossover?

He explored the options presented by the status window. The shield appeared to function more or less like the original. He had access to an inventory by using the shield’s gem, he could unlock new forms by consuming materials, he could improve his stats by mastering shields, and he could strengthen the legendary shield by using essences. The latter was the only unfamiliar function to him. He’d explore it later, because it looked like it involved sacrificing shield forms.

Instead, he slumped back on the bed. “So now I have a potential awesome superpower in a superhero world… and I’m Tetsuya, male, 18 years old and less than a year away from starting uni.” He paused, mulling it over. “... It’s kind of a second chance. The kid died and now I’m here. I could go to university again but in an area I like better. Or even into a technical school. Those have good employment rates. I mean… do I have to follow the plot?”

|| Objective: Become a Hero Student. T-330d. ||

He stared at the words overlaying his vision, red-colored like a stop sign. Then he closed his eyes and groaned loudly. He’d just had to jinx it, hadn’t he?

---

My writing has been so slow lately... well, this idea was originally an MCU civilian thrown into YJ but I've been very inspired by Debut or Die (an idol time travel and body changing with gamer powers manwha and novel). I might switch my MHA OC into YJ and make that the other story. That one has Dauntless' powers (from Worm).
As you can tell, it's a modified MHA world and Shielder powers (bc they are already too much and I don't like RotSH tb-perfectly-fucking-h). The oc-insert was also not originally male, tho it's a small detail that's missable.

 

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.3

Whether it was the lack of other soldiers accompanying them or the urgency of the slowly worsening raining demons, Cassandra moved at a faster pace, jogging determinedly over snow-covered ice. Volt followed half a step behind, forward facial sensor-pits glowing without a flicker. Mute of breathing to human ears, the focus of a Tenno on the hunt was probably disconcerting.

Certainly, Cassandra seemed somewhat off-put when, ambushed by lone demons, the warframe reacted like a coiled spring and laid low the attackers with two or three devastatingly strong blows.

Truth be told, Ren was letting the equipment do most of the work. Her focus was on keeping her will steady. Rather than immerse herself into the warframe’s body, and feel the ice, the wind, the stray branches, the fires from lost barricades, the smell of blood and offal, she took a step back. Unbound from her weak mental constitution, guided only by the detached orders of a mind that knew what was to be done in theory, the warframe moved like the machine it was meant to be. Smooth, strong, silent, mechanically precise if predictable in its flawlessness.

And as much as Ren would like to not see the corpses of soldiers and civilians, and hear the screeches of things that were quite probably literally born from nightmares, she was unable to close her eyes. She shouldn’t either, as she was in hostile territory, and because her humanity almost demanded it of her. A careful balance between caring too much and breaking down, and caring too little and just leaving it all behind.

It was ultimately an untenable state of being, but Ren was going to stick with it until she couldn’t anymore.

Procrastinate your well-deserved breakdown just like old times, dear chap!

Concrete sounds of fighting increased. Cassandra pointed to the left side of the river. “Over there, up on the bank.” Eldritch light and the sounds of combat originated from somewhere behind the pine trees blocking their view.

Volt nodded, then Ren hesitated. Will I get shot at if I burst into scene? But the heavily armored woman behind them didn’t have the benefit of techno-augmented muscles and would still take some time to climb that. She shook the warframe’s head, willing herself to fall back into the armor. “I’m going to scout ahead.”

Breaking from her light jog into a full blown sprint, she rushed the stairs cut into the hill. The path culminated at one end of a bridge, now broken and littered with flaming debris. The large torches that topped the structure held their own fires, struggling to exist in the harsh wind blowing through the valley. On the same slope, the path dropped down, cutting through ruins that days before must have been some sort of building or fort. Ren’s sensors sharpened as she focused on the hole in space, fractal edges intercut by stony protrusions that faded out of existence at the edges and intersected like an alien sea urchin. The rift. Shit. A green cloud emanated from it, blanketing the battlefield in a ghostly light.

Ren stepped back, looked over the stairs to see Cassandra just only now starting to climb them. Her head swiveled between the woman and the figures fighting for their lives not a hundred meters away. Priorities. Well, in the worst case scenario I’m still a goddamned warframe. They can’t hurt me that bad. “Found it! I’m going ahead!” She pointed to her objective as she hollered to Cassandra, then started running without waiting for an answer. To the defenders, she shouted. “Reinforcements!”

Soldiers attempted to surround and hold down the demons with the sheer force of numbers, while archers fought to not hit them, and a single mage cast homing ice bolts. And then a small-point war machine barreled into a demon, all the weight that had been negated while traversing over ice made manifest. It had about the same result as a car hitting a pedestrian at full speed. The demon was launched away, broken body dissipating as a crackle of electricity ran through it in its last moments.

Volt didn’t stop, twirling its bo and side-stepping the terrified soldiers to bat another enemy into oblivion. There were actually only three demons present, although all of them humanoid-ish in shape, the stronger variants she’d observed until now. “Three. All demons defeated.” She spoke loudly, hoping to broadcast, if not her allegiance, then her intentions. Please don’t shoot me. “Cassandra, the Seeker, is inbound.”

The soldiers looked among themselves, looking for anybody to step up and do something. Ren immediately noted the two non-humans in the bunch. To be fair, they were very noticeable. The elf she’d seen before, it was the mage who’d examined her before. And the dwarf, richly dressed, cut an interesting figure himself, what with exposing his chest to the frigid air and the small-scale balista in his hands. Before she had the time to examine the first bit of technology she’d seen in this world further, the elf stepped up.

Apparently unsurprised and unbothered by Volt, the mage had only taken a moment to catch his breath. “We have no time to lose.” He fearlessly approached the rift, motioning for them to come closer. “Quickly, before more come through!” He opened a hand to her, asking for Volt’s own.

After a moment of silent and unmoving contemplation, Ren moved. With deliberate movements, she presented the warframe’s left hand, palm up.

The mage took it, his own movements deliberate as he pulled it closer to examine it. Now with, relatively, time to look closer, the mark on the warframe looked like fade-light had been wedged into small fissures, or scars. Like Volt had cut its hand on the fractal glass-like edges of a rift. Or shrapnel. The mage quickly measured the width of the mark with his fingers, then, pausing to look the warframe in the eyes, or equivalent, he thrust the glowing hand towards the rift.

Something that wasn’t electricity arced between the mark and the rift. The edges of reality, visible like rippling water, started to disappear. The stones fading into reality faded out, and the green light physically bleeding onto the ground sputtered out. With a final thunderclap, the rift closed in itself, and Volt’s HUD became a gibbering mess. A magnetic proc again? Twice was the start of a pattern.

Ren flexed Volt’s hand. Nothing appeared or felt out of the ordinary.

“You closed the rift.” Cassandra’s amazed voice interrupted her thoughts.

Ren flashed her a victory sign. Whoohoo. Yay. Go team.

With demons no longer invading reality, the soldiers had relaxed, and Cassandra sheathed her sword. The mood was, for now, favorable to the statue-like possible abomination towering over even the tallest of them. As the paladin converged on them, the mage spoke up. “It seems I was correct. The mark can close rifts.”

“And it could also close the Breach itself.” Cassandra almost smiled.

The mage demurred. “Possibly.”

They seemed to be forgetting, or were trying very hard not to address the elephant in the room. Namely, that this mark was attached to Ren’s hand. She blinked at them, a purely self-directed action, seeing as warframes lacked such things as eyes, much less eyelids. She must have unconsciously shifted the warframe, because both turned to her.

The elf addressed her, almost nonchalantly. “It seems… you hold the key to our salvation.”

“Wonderful.” Ren deadpanned.

“That’s the spirit.” The dwarf joined them, brushing snow from his coat. “I thought we’d be ass-deep in demons forever.”

“Not dead?” Said Ren.

“Well, details.” He shrugged with a roguish smile. “Varric Tethras: rogue, storyteller, and occasionally unwelcome tag-along.” An actual roguish smile, complete with a wink and everything. Cassandra’s smile disappeared in response.

Varric was, however sad it sounded, the first person to introduce themselves normally to Ren. Leliana had been part of an interrogation, Cassandra had let Leliana introduce her while she glared, and Solas… Can’t give away that I was actually conscious that whole time and know your name, buddy. The elf hadn’t introduced himself yet, but she was expecting good things from his previous behavior.

A bit happy that at least one person in the whole world wasn’t chomping to kill them, Ren joined their hands at chest level and bowed in greeting. “Ren. Volt. Nice to meet you.”

The elf huffed, amused, and Varric opened his arms in mock outrage. “You wound me, Chuckles. It’s a pleasure to meet me.”

“I have met worse people indeed.” The elf conceded with a tiny smirk, and turned to Ren. “If there are to be introductions, my name is Solas.”

Varric leaned in. “He’s the one who’s trying to convince people you aren’t a demon.”

Ren bowed to Solas too, in gratitude as much as a greeting. “Well met. I appreciate your efforts.” As useless as they’ve been. This old timey speech is influencing me. She clapped their hands, making half the people around jump like scared rabbits. “Okay, rift closed, time to take care of the big one?”

Cassandra traded a look with Solas. He nodded. “Yes. We must get to the forward camp. Leliana is waiting for news there.”

“Let’s go then. Never a good idea to keep her waiting.” Said Varric.

It was like stepping on a landmine. Ren tilted her head as she observed Cassandra step up to him, towering over the dwarf in intimidation. “Absolutely not!” She gestured with an open hand. “Your help is–”

“Needed. Have you been to the valley lately, seeker? Your men are barely holding on. You need all the help you can get.” And he was offering.

“... Your help is appreciated.” The tall woman huffed, like she was making a great concession. Ren wanted to trade a look with Solas, like. Are you seeing these two? Old married couple, enemies to lover in two hundred k, or, well, I’d say Legolas and Gimli but you’re the elf here. Tho, Cassandra’s prettier.

The party, now a proper adventurer party! Warrior, mage, rogue and… robot?, departed. The regular path blocked by snow and debris, they descended, returning to the frozen river Cassandra and Ren had come from. The path following the river’s bank was narrow and barely there, the mountains tight over their heads. Cassandra led, followed by Varric, Ren and finally Solas. The cover also kept them safe. The river widened into a lake, as frozen as the rest of it, sporting what would be a few rustic fishing cabins if not for the demons. And the fact that they were on fire.

Varric crowed at Cassandra and the three of them, obviously used to combat, fell into an easy-looking coordination. Ren took one moment to brace herself, twirling the bo, before finding the biggest demon and sliding down to meet it. Hi. Bye. She probed it with a couple of strikes but despite being tougher than the ones she’d faced before, sporting even spiky armor, it could do very little to Volt. She was strong enough to keep it staggered, and the one hit it got in didn’t quite manage to down her shields.

Alone the demons were not so tough, even to an unmodded and unmastered warframe. It was in groups that they became dangerous. Jot it down: under duress, I will admit that having religious nuts at my back isn’t… maybe… the end of the world. The group dispatched the demons gathered, wiped their brows, and continued on.

Featuring: stairs. I’m so glad I don’t tire. The path picked off on the other side of the lake, and climbed sinuously behind the houses. Pine trees, or their planetary equivalent of needle-leaved evergreens, formed an almost untouched forest around them. It reminded Ren of the most remote walks she had done through her home’s trails. She wondered how the bark would feel to a warframe. She clearly had tactile sensation, but would it be the same? It couldn’t, her logical mind dictated before her emotional heart discarded the topic. She shouldn’t lose focus now.

“So.” Varric, certainly the most social out of them all, breached the silence as they jogged on the snowy incline. “Not trying to be rude, but what exactly are you? Because I've never seen anybody like you.”

Unseen, Ren smiled at his easy tone and irreverent way. “A Tenno.”

He nodded. “Fascinating…”

“I’ll explain later.” Well, parts of it. It wasn’t like Ren herself knew how she’d become… them.

“I must confess,” Solas gave his two cents, “I am curious as well.” You and a bunch of others, magic man.

“You know what I’m curious about?” The dwarf again. “Do you know how that.” He meant the fuck-huge hole in the sky. “Happened?”

“No.” Ren snorted. “I was minding my own business. Then there were demons. Then I got dragged into this hellhole!”

“Sounds like it was a shit day for everybody.” Varric tsked. Besides him, Solas nodded, giving the warframe a curious look.

They were reaching the top of the last flight of stairs cut into the mountainside, like any proper devoted pilgrim path, when Ren’s hand twitched and sparked. The mark flared and the warframe registered something attempting to send signals through the neurons in the area. At the same time, Solas and Cassandra both snapped to attention.

“Another rift!” The warrior unsheathed her sword and prepared her shield.

They crossed the last steps at a run, just in time to see the space in front of a fortified gate crunch in itself with jagged green-edged teeth and rip apart, dropping half a dozen wraiths and demons on top of the soldiers guarding it.

“We must seal it! Quickly!” Solas reached for Volt before they bounded into the fray. “Use the mark on the rift! It might affect the demons!”

Ren nodded. This, she was uniquely equipped to do. Go and slide, bullet jump and double, I love being a warframe! The soldiers watched, surely amazed and flabbergasted, as gravity decided to quietly submit and let Volt walk all over it. The war machine landed in a slide, having crossed something like fifty meters in two seconds, and righted itself jump behind the rift. Now, hmm, like this? Just, gotta not trigger Shock… not that I have enough energy for that. Ren thrust her hand forward.

An eldritch arc sprung from the mark on their palm and hit the rift, striking like a pebble into a pond. The rip in space-time was still there, but it rippled and the demons seemed to feel it. The slightest waiver was enough for the soldiers and Ren’s adventuring party, who brutally capitalized on it. They started moping up the demons and Ren, very aware of their supposed role in this venture, focused on closing the portal to the Fade.

I’ve the macguffin power. I’m in the usual protagonist position. Except for, well. A pair of soldiers were pointing their spears at them, wondering if they should also stab her, and in the arrow slits above, the archers also had them in their sights. That.

“Open the gate!” Cassandra, ordered the soldiers. “We’ve arrived at the forward camp. Leliana should be waiting for us.”

A place where I’m surrounded by people who want to burn me at the stake. Ren didn’t say. Joy.

---

Spoiler

I've always wanted to return to this and finally, finally I managed. i don't know what exactly was blocking me but it's gone. I'll probably get another part of this before anything else (i know i know, both runless and sakuragachamon need my attention. ... and others).
i want to finish the prologue already, come on!!
also, no images. i've had no time or inspiration for them unfortunately

 

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.4

The forward camp had clearly been established on one side of a bridge. Unfortunately, there was an active demonic invasion, so its perimeter had shrunk until said camp was limited to the two gatehouses on each side of the bridge. On the one hand, it was a defensible stone structure; on the other, if a demon meteor happened to land on it like Ren had seen before…

A squad of mean-faced soldiers greeted Ren as the gates opened for their party. Some even had their weapons unsheathed, although none of them were actually pointing towards them. She imagined it was because none of them wanted to be on the very bad side of Seeker Cassandra. The mood was roughly the same as in the town, but some people were looking at Volt with something like curiosity. Or maybe even hope. They spotted Leliana’s hooded head ahead, and were a bit impressed. She must have laid the groundwork for this change of opinion. Just a bit though: religious types were easily manipulated by people they considered authorities.

“You brought that thing here!?!”

But of course. We can’t have nice things.

A man in one of those priestly frocks, red over white robes, was shouting. And gesticulating. Pointing at Volt and clearly wanting their ‘demonic’ head chopped off. Leliana, next to him, was keeping a praise-worthy diplomatic face, and surreptitiously gesturing her people to not. Engage. Cassandra herself was now wearing a scowl comparable to the one she’d greeted Ren with. Her steps hurried, shoulders squaring so much a person could use her to teach geometry, she moved like the medieval tank she was.

The non-humans of the party had slowed down, and Ren followed their lead. “Should we…?”

“Let’s leave the Seeker to handle that.” Varric turned smoothly to go sit on a bunch of stacked planks.

“Discretion is the better part of valor.” Solas agreed, taking the opportunity himself to lean against his staff and rest.

Ren didn’t begrudge them for it. For one, she didn’t need rest. I’m really impressed actually, they’re still squishy mortals, who were fighting demons and then did a forced march up a mountain side. So many stairs. Even the wizard kept up. Not everybody could literally be built for this sort of thing.

Across the bridge, Cassandra was somewhere between an epic dressing down, or a shouting match with an equally stubborn person. Leliana had gotten involved and was playing the conciliatory party. That was one smart woman.

Now that Ren had a moment to stop… Well, what should I do? Nothing that’ll send people jumping off the bridge either. Right, let’s see if I can do that. Logically, she was now in a safe zone, like Cetus maybe. Or perhaps just before a survival mission. In any case, there was something that a warframe should be capable of doing that she hadn’t tried yet. She opened her left hand palm up. Do I–

NAVIGATION
EQUIPMENT
MARKET
OPTIONS​

Oh, here it is. Shit, this is not the normal menu.

There were things missing, like Operator, Communications, Quests, Profile, and especially the Exit option. It told her a lot about her situation. She was definitely stuck, at least for now.

After a brief check: nobody was seeing the holographic menu, everybody thought she was looking at the air, good. She quickly went through the Navigation and the Options. One was a map of the area she’d traversed before. No fast travel, but she knew that was asking too much. The options were all related to her HUD. The rest seemed too sensitive, but worth going back to later. Perhaps she could figure out a friendly fire opt-out in this very real world.

The fact that the Market was accessible was hopeful. Not sure by how much, seeing as she didn’t have any credits or platinum. But at least the option to expand her arsenal was there. Now, Equipment was the goldmine. Arsenal, Abilities, Mods, Inventory, even the Foundry!

It’d be helpful if I had, you know, anything. A mod. Any mod. But Volt didn’t. In fact, as far as the arsenal was concerned, they didn’t even have their Braton! The only thing Ren could do was… well, Fashionframe. Hold that thought.

“Hey.” She called out to her friendliest companions. “I’m going to do a thing.”

Varric looked at Solas, who shrugged minutely. “A thing?” He said, wary. “What kind of thing? Nothing explosive, right?”

“Purely cosmetic.” Ren assured him with a-okay sign. Then she started cycling through colors. Since it’s winter, let’s go for something that doesn’t stand out in stark white. I wish I had all the regular colors unlocked, but this palette is good enough for something simple.

Murmurs erupted as the warframe was washed over by waves of invisible light, its colors changing. Before its shell was a light gray with a blue-green undertone, its undersides in two tones of brown. Now the gray was replaced by a tone just a shade off white and the browns by rock gray. Accents around the curves of its shape, previously blending in with the browns, were revealed in a sky-blue tonality. Lastly, the color of the various sensors and lights speckled in strategic points changed from orange to blue. Ren didn’t have to look to also know that the sparks that occasionally skittered across Volt had turned white like any ability they cast from this moment on.

“What’s going on here? What have you done?” Cassandra walked in, closely followed by Leliana and, surprisingly, the priest from before half hiding behind the nun.

“I changed colors.” Ren replied in that tone of voice that showed exactly how stupid she thought the question was. Then, she applied the colors she’d just chosen to the Mk1-Bo. She twirled the staff. Not bad.

The warrior didn’t respond in speech. Rather, she was incapable of that much. Instead, several incredulous and furious grunts escaped her.

Ahah, did I break her language processor? Ren was amused, but she also knew she would have to give at least a bit of an explanation to keep their relation to these people non-hostile. “You humans, and elves and dwarves,” she nodded to Solas and Varric, “change your appearance too, don’t you?”

“That’s a bit different. We don’t change colors like an octopus.” The dwarf pointed out.

“Forgive my presumption, but is changing colors the way that a Tenno changes clothes?” Asked Solas.

“No. I’m not wearing anything right now.” Volt crossed their arms, ignoring the reactions to that declaration. “I don’t even have a Syandana.” Practically naked in Tenno terms. “No,” they answered Solas, “this is probably closer to hair dying. I really can’t find a non-transhumanist equivalent. Maybe something like tattooing, but that you can change at will?” Or would sigils be the equivalent for that?

“This discussion has gone far enough!” Said Cassandra, ears and nose visibly flushed. Not from the cold. “We need to stop the Breach, not… urgh! Lose time with meaningless details!”

Leliana smoothly interceded. “The Temple of Sacred Ashes and the Breach are directly ahead. However, the concentration of demons is at its worst in our path. Commander Cullen and the majority of our troops are doing their best to hold the line there. Alternatively, there is a mountain path to the East, longer but likely safer.” She laid out the situation. “Ren Volt, you know your capabilities the best. How would you proceed? A full frontal charge with the soldiers, or a path while the demons are distracted by the soldiers?” Cassandra nodded to me as well.

Errr… I’m not actually a soldier from the Old War! I’m just a gamer! Ren inwardly panicked for a moment, disconnecting herself from Volt as much as she could. Right. So, as a Tenno, my instinct is to be sneaky. I don’t even have my primary gun to sweep enemies. Plus, working with the soldiers? Do I trust them not to accidentally hit me in the melee? I mean, what are the disadvantages of the mountain path? There had to be downsides, or the choice wouldn’t even have been presented to them. Well, it’s longer and we’re on a time limit… and, maybe, less support because the soldiers will be distracting the enemy? Ahh, I can’t think of anything on the spot. Gut feeling it is.

“I’m better equipped for a stealth mission.” Said Volt. “I’d take the mountain path.”

“So be it.” Cassandra nodded. “Bring everyone left in the valley, Leliana. Every single one of them. Varric, Solas, we will escort Ren through the mountain. Ready yourselves.”

“Time to go. You ready?” Varric asked the warframe.

Ren hummed. With their Arsenal empty, they were already as good as they could be. “There’s one thing actually. Do you have money?” Varric nodded. “Cool, mind lending me a couple of coins? I’ll try to pay you back.”

“Sure, I have a few silvers on me? What do you need them for? Nobody’s exactly open for business right now.”

Ren pointed to a spot about five meters away. “I need you to throw one to the ground over there, and to give me the other one.”

Varric shared a look with Solas, who blinked, nonplussed. “Right, why not?” He tossed a silver coin to where the weird not-demon had pointed, then dropped another in their waiting palm.

Volt looked at the singular coin in their hand. I hope this works. Just… think and it’ll work, Ren. They closed their fingers around it and when they opened them again, the coin was gone. Then, they walked over to the coin on the ground. Before Varric and Solas’ eyes, as well as several soldiers watching the proceedings, the coin simply disappeared when the Tenno got close. It stopped where the coin had been, staring at the ground, then at their marked hand.

Inwardly, Ren was crowing victory. It works! I can LOOT! Loot all the things!! She quickly went through her menu. It’s not in the inventory, and my credits are still zero? Did it… did it count as real world money? A world of possibilities opened before her.

Oh. Oh yes. Now we’re talking.

They just needed to take care of the Breach, then they would be free to use this.

---

Spoiler

somehow this was finished and ended up resting on my drive instead of being posted. oh, right, because i'm job searching rn.
Anyway, this introduces how Ren will actually be getting possibly OP. these are the gamer elements people should be worrying about. Also, yes, Ren's been running around in a baseline warframe, for shame.

 

omg these last months were so... urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. also, the last what... 3 paragraphs of this chapter have been slowly strangling me for several weeks. but i did it. i prevailed. it's bad writing, but its done. just one or two more to finish up section 1.

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Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.5

Whereas Ren and her guards had followed the river up to the forward camp, low in the valley, now they went high. Heading East, the trail disappeared beneath the snow. Varric was buried nearly knee high in it, but he persevered. They climbed the slope, the majestic view spreading out before them, tall, snow-covered peaks crowning the horizon like shark's teeth.

These, Varric introduced, were the Frostback Mountains. As inhospitable as they looked, there were some tribes of humans? That hadn’t been clear. Anyway, the Avvar lived on them. Despite that, they were mostly considered Ferelden territory. Ferelden was the country they were in. To the West of the mountain range lay Orlais, which was, some would say, fancier. Well, it's good to put some context to the names I've been hearing. Also, they were in the planet's southern hemisphere, on account of things getting hotter the norther a person went. Just something to know.

The march wasn’t conducive to conversation. Trudging through snow and the rarefied air, the mere mortals among them had to conserve their breath if they wanted to make good time without being exhausted. There were probably going to be demons in the way. They’d lost contact with a scouting party earlier. Ren wondered how people lost contact when they didn’t even have radios. Feeling the cold merely as another facet of the air, unable to feel the discomfort of it, and quite grateful for it, Volt walked leisurely. If they went any faster, they’d lose the rest of the party.

Good to know I can ditch the religious fanatics if I want to.

She admired the landscape. She doubted she’d ever been so high up. The closest she’d come to when she’d, well, not been a warframe, had been those snow days at the tallest peak around. A miserable title for a place that didn’t have permafrost, and barely more than fifty meters of its height ever did get snow. There were a lot of little hills and mountains back home, and she’d seen some foreign ones on trips. The Frostbacks put most of them to shame. They were gorgeous to boot. The mood lighting ruins the image a bit, but there are things you don’t complain about during demonic invasions.

The rest of the time, she kept trying to fiddle with her warframe. The system wasn’t customizable in the game, but now that she was actually in a warframe. To be or to inhabit, that is the question. She could bring up the warframe’s own settings. Of a kind. It was a lot of trial and error, going through the HUD with focus and attempting to mentally bring up orokin-written menus. She couldn’t change her pick-up radius, for example. That made sense, as there already existed mods for that sort of thing. But she could determine what she wanted to pick up. Ren might have ended up with a cubic meter of snow in their inventory by accident. Instead, she prodded the system until she was automatically picking up the local currencies so long as they were resting below a certain height.

Let’s not call attention to myself by making people’s wallets fly. At least IFF is finally functional.

Another thing she managed to do was to add Cassandra, Varric and Solas to her nominal party. As regular, if magical people, all Volt could do was add neat little markers on their minimap. People on the origin system were all augmented of some sort, that was Ren’s feeling. So, being able to gauge their health and shield levels was automatic. Not as simple in low tech fantasy land. This should be enough to stop friendly fire, at least from abilities. Which… I can’t use for lack of energy. Likewise, there were no comms and she wasn’t hopeful about being able to revive any of them should they go down. The green healing fog used by Tenno had to have some technological base. Nanites, at a guess.

This messing around distracted Ren, but not to a dangerous level. The moment she saw the path, an invisible dirt trail beneath the snow, turn into wooden slats, she turned her full being towards reality. The next step Volt took had their entire focus behind it.

A building in rough stone was built into the mountainside, long ladders leading up along with hefty pulley systems. The ladders went really high. In fact, Ren estimated that each of the two ladders was about two whole storeys tall.

The others were taking a short break, Cassandra informing them of what came ahead.

Ren looked at the ladders. Looked at the mere mortals. Looked at the height again.

Yeah, I’m not betting on the hum– humanoids. “Hey, I can make us get up there in a jiffy.” She pointed up.

“How?” Asked Cassandra.

“By picking you up and jumping.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Ren tilted their head and crossed their arms. “I’m strong, I’m not going to drop you.”

“Well… Because…”

Varric snorted. “That’s not exactly dignified.”

Volt tilted their head the other way and Solas raised an eyebrow. “What is the worth of dignity in the face of disaster? How would you carry us?”

Ren turned over bullet jumping in her mind for a moment. Right, it happened from a crouching position, so as funny as it would be, she couldn’t bridal carry them. Maybe with some practice, but not currently. A lot of her transversal abilities were still dependant on the warframe’s control. The more she mastered Volt, the more liberty she would have. “Either piggy-back or over my shoulder like a potato sack.”

Solas ended up being her first test-subject, regally grabbing onto Volt’s shoulders before the warframe rocketed upwards, grabbed onto the first ledge, climbed, and repeated the process. A height of over fifteen meters done in an instant. Volt carefully deposited Solas down, the elf having wisely clung to the warframe like his life depended on it. Then, they jaunty saluted him and stepped back into the drop. Eheheh warframes don’t take fall damage! They landed with a puff of snow and a deep thud that belied only a bit of the weight the cyborg war platform should be transmitting.

Cassandra gave up and stepped up, leaving Varric the last to be carried, over Volt’s shoulder due to having unfortunately short arms.

Atop the last landing, the incline was soft and there were wooden steps peeking out of the snow. The path curved back to the West, giving the four of them a magnificent view over the breach and what had once been a glorious temple. From their vantage point, they could see the skeletal ruins of the holy building, jutting like blackened ribs amidst the green-tinged haze that covered the valley’s depths. Perfect as Volt’s vision might be, there was something to be said about the ability to zoom. Did medieval people have binoculars? She thought so, but wasn’t sure. She couldn’t make out more, and in that moment wished dearly for a sniper.

After one last bend, there laid the entrance to the path they were going to take. It burrowed through the mountain, connecting several old and unused mining tunnels, surfacing every now and then until they reached the eastern border of the temple. The entrance itself was carved like a church’s atrium, several pillars meeting into a classical rounded arch. Whatever illumination was supposed to guide travelers through the tunnels was absent in the chaos, leaving only darkness after a few steps in.

But Volt, stopping at the sill, took in the ambush laying in the low-light conditions. One demon of that variety that vaguely imitated a hunchbacked human ahead, and the low but telling green glow of at least a couple of wraiths waiting in the corners. Right. “Ambush, I’m dealing with it.” They said over their shoulder, and jumped in.

The moment they crossed into the darkness, the warframe activated its torch. I’d forgotten we had that. I need to be able to turn it off for stealth missions… hey come here! Ren swept the bigger demon’s feet with her bo, only to find out it was a lot less solid there than expected. It still unbalanced it, giving her the perfect opportunity to smash its head with a two-handed strike. The two wraiths were easy prey for the rest of her squad.

A quarter of said squad then fell on her like the wrath of an angry mother superior. “What were you thinking! You can’t just charge ahead like, like you want to get killed!” If Cassandra hadn’t been holding a sword and shield, she was sure she would be grabbing Volt by their nonexistent lapels. Her hands were raised halfway there, face red and trembling, inches away from Volt’s collarbone.

I- I suppose I did Leroy Jenkins myself so… Ren caught herself cringing and stopped. No.

No.

The familiar shame at being chastised evaporated from her veins, sublimated. Realization rang in her non-existent ears, increasing in pitch until it blocked out all other emotions. I don’t owe you anything. They stepped away from their body, distancing their self from the woman and the other two. You, who wanted me dead without cause or trial. You… zealots of an unknown faith. You people who don’t see me as human. You think a little banter is going to make me forget that?

Ren took a deep breath that didn’t move Volt’s chest. When they replied, their tone was as bland and glacial as a computer. “I was thinking that none of these things can hurt me.” They tilted their head. “Unlike you.” But that’s what I get for trying to be helpful.

The indignation was a sting that would readily morph into resentment and Ren was letting it. Lost as she was in this hostile world, she probably should. She needed to be decisive, steadfast and above all, not a doormat. The hours spent traveling with these strangers and fighting through hordes ever more alien and demonic had created enough distance from that cell under the church that for a moment she’d almost forgotten the paladin’s very first words to her.

Tell me what you are and what you were doing at the conclave, and I might not kill you right here.

Very calmly, Volt raised its chin, straightened its spinal core, optics peering down at the woman, and turned on its heel. Their sensors had detected a wooden door in the gloom. It was worth exploring. Medieval ruins, no matter how well preserved, looked very different from when the structures were still being used. Wood rotted, fabric and furs disappeared, the wind picked up the smaller objects and took them away.

Looks something like a guardhouse, or maybe an office? They deliberately and definitely weren’t paying attention to the hushed voices behind them. The money they were picking up was more important. Should they also put some of this in their inventory?

The sound of metal on stone announced the Seeker approaching. “I apologize.” She was blunt. “I understand that I was… too harsh but…” There she stopped herself, seeming to rethink her words. “Ren, you are the key, our only chance to close the rift. The lives of everybody in Haven… the safety of everybody in Thedas perhaps, depend on you. There cannot be room for recklessness.”

And your concern would sound so much more genuine if I didn’t know that, if I wasn’t so needed, you would already have tried to destroy me. Ren let Volt’s head fall back, ‘eyes’ pointed at the ceiling. But it was true. Ren was these people’s one and only plan to stop the sky from literally crashing down upon their heads. Is this their plan, softening me up by making me develop a few personal connections? They thought, glancing at an unknowing Cassandra, both contrite and firm. Finally, the warframe moved as if sighing. “Seeker. The only time I've ever been in actual danger was when that meteor almost hit us; and I'm not sure it would have actually killed me. Worry more about yourself.” And keep your fake concern.

---

Spoiler

fuck where do i start.
hm. so i quit my masters became officially unemployed, had that initial phase of optimism about getting a job. ... swiftly crushed, along with my hope and little remaining self esteem over the following three months. THEN, after seeking even more mental health help, i got into a government sponsored programming course (i'm liking it), but then december and the dreaded christmass, aaand my grandma is finally dying after ten painful years of worsening dementia. i'm good, but it's wrecking some people, who can't use their time anymore and so everybody is suffering. i think i've only really managed to write any decent amount in january.
ALSO along the way I played waaaaayyyyyyyyy too much Warframe. good and bad. Annnnd Fontaine's story arc in Genshin Impact had me by my little lesbian brain with a deadly chokehold, so maybe expect some writng about Furina. ... And Arlecchino. I have so many Arlecchino headcanons I've already resigned myself to getting disappointed when she officially comes out. (leaks say she's aATK scaler? plz, she needs to be HP scaling with a mechanic like Star Rail's Blade to really get the connecting threads between Fatui Operative, the curse of wilderness and the Narzissenkreuz that are hinted at in her character design). ... .. you see what I mean, she doesn't live rent free in my head, i'm paying her extra to stay.

ANYWAY the characterization in the last part of the chapter probably feels clunky i know, but i've also given up on caring, if anyone has ANY good ideas... you can comment on the thread. might as well get some use out of it that's not archival...

 

title still being workshopped. usually not what i write here (romance? in this thread?) but i don't want to lose motivation to finish this longass wishy washy oneshot so i'll put here every scene i finish before posting it on ao3.
part 1.

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╳ ╳ ╳

“Oh? Come over here, you little critter you!” The god ran carelessly through the streets at night. She was like a child, twirling and chasing the cat that caught her attention. “You dare to run from me?”

Wasn’t she so vulnerable, all alone?

“Stop right this instant! Oh?” After turning a corner, the cat was gone. She looked around, but couldn’t find it. It escaped, leaving her all alone again.

A rustling sound. The god perked up and slowly turned on her heel. Beneath the bench to the side, she spied two glowing orbs. Like a thief, she tiptoed closer and bent down carefully. In the gloom, a round furry form was barely visible.

The god’s hands shot forward. “Got you! Ah?” This was not the black and white cat from before. “Who are you?” It was a big white and black… cat? That dangled from the god’s hands.

It was a very weird cat. In the light of the lamps, the big round eyes didn’t shine and revealed their bright red color. Sturdy, short paws connected to a wide torso and a long, plume-like. It was entirely white, except for its paws which were black to its cat-elbows, where they faded into a very marked striped pattern. It was…

“Cute.” Adorable. “Fluffy.” Positively furry. “!” Furina, archon of hydro and justice, ruler over all waters, gasped. She was… holding a cat! Actually holding a cat! “Oh goodness.” She’d never gotten this far. Animals didn’t seem to like her for some incomprehensible reason. What should she do next? She couldn’t let it go, it might run away!

But ultimately her arms couldn’t deal with the quite heavy feline. With effort, she managed to hug the cat to herself. The soft fur tickled her neck as she pressed the animal closer. It was… such a heavenly sensation! She squealed and sat down with it on her lap.

“Who’s a pretty boy? Who’s the softest, fluffiest, bestest kitten in all of Fontaine?” She cooed, rubbing its belly. She patted its head, played with its huge paws while it sat slumped in her lap, even flipped it over so that she could scritch and scratch it all over. “You are, oh yes you are, eheh!”

All along, the creature suffered her ministrations with a half-lidded look on its snout.

But eventually, even Furina had to leave. It was late. “I wish I could take you with me.” She confessed to the cat. Alas, the Palais Mermonia had strict rules on pets, considering certain… incidents. Really, it was ridiculous, it’d been centuries since!

Sad, she got up after squishing its head one last time. Perhaps she’d meet this lovely cat again one day. With all of her willpower, she walked away from that magnificent beast.

A soft brush of fur at her calves made her stop. The cat rubbed its flank on her leg once more before sitting down, looking up at her. “We can’t.” Furina sobbed dramatically and resumed walking faster. The cat followed, trotting at her side. She turned and it did too. She stopped, and it waited for her.

“You… you want to come with me?” She asked it, eyes shining.

The big red eyes of the cat seemed to convey its desire to be taken to a home where it would be spoiled and receive pets and lay down in a special cushion just for it.

Furina bit her lip. She couldn’t… “Unless.” A devious, duplicitous plan came to her. “Leave it to me, mister kitten!” She grabbed its paws. “I’ll take you to your new home, I promise.”

It wasn’t like anybody had to know what, or who, went inside their archon’s bedroom.

╳ ╳ ╳

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IDK seriously. You know that old, i think it's from anime trope, where a girl takes a cat or other animal home and the next morning it's a naked guy? Yeah, that but Arlecchino is 1) a terrifying shapeshifter of the depths, 2) not turning back into a human bc that would defeat the purpose of spying in animal form, and 3) kinda not there bc i wanted it to be the least problematic possible.
On an important note.... read the webcomic "Tiger, Tiger" it gave me so much inspiration for Arlecchino and it is *chef's kiss* horrors of the depths, bisexuals and queer horrors of the depths wrapped in a packed of awesome art. SEA SPONGES!!!