MGM - Chapter 81

Jason Black

Evening

Musutafu, Japan

We were only a couple hours into our multiversal jaunt, and my stomach was screaming at me for sustenance.

Fortunately, finding a place to get lunch and discuss all of the USJ drama had been as simple as asking the nearest person for popular and out of the way ‘dating spot’ locations. 

Although Cassie looked like some sort of hitchhiking, punk pop tourist, a dip into an alleyway, a smooth about-face, and a flash of raw magic saw me go from the mythical, crown-wearing Avalon to Jason Black - still mythical looking, but now in a different way. A stylishly casual way. And with how different everyone in this world was already turning out to be, my elven features and ‘unfairly good looks’ (Cassie’s words, not mine) didn’t stand out much. Less than if I was completely normal-looking, I’d imagine.

After I magical-girl’d myself into a stylish black overcoat, a form-fitting gray turtleneck, dark slacks, and soft-soled black boots, Cassie and I made our way to the afore-recommended Neko no Mori; a cat cafe tucked between two mid-rise apartment complexes in lower Musutafu. 

I probably looked like a tourist too, now that I thought about it - Musutafu was so much more lively and colorful than Brockton Bay had ever been, even after I’d cleaned the city of its little garbage problem. Everyone was so vibrant and happy and diverse, the sky so blue and bright that I found myself craning my head back to stare up into the sun just as often as I swiveled around to take in the foreign buildings and people. For a short amount of time, hand in hand with one half of the loves of my life, everything felt so… peaceful.

We didn’t even talk about the whole ‘killed over a hundred villains and asked All-Might for a spar in exchange for healing’ thing. We didn’t have to; not until we were out of the public eye and eating flaky croissants dusted over with cat hair. So Cassie took pictures with this chunky black camera she pulled from her Bag of Holding; an old one that printed out the photos from the bottom, while I lived in the moment and guided us to the cafe.

It was only after we were properly seated in a cozy corner booth of the forest-themed cat cafe, surrounded by the scent of fat, lazy felines, freshly baked pastries, and some sort of pleasant, strawberry-scented air freshener, did we decide to get down to business.

Or, at least- Cassie did. 

She’d been holding something back ever since she’d realized what world we were in. I’d noticed it back in the USJ, but I hadn’t pushed her about it because I knew that she’d inevitably tell me what was on her mind.

And boy oh boy did she tell me.

In gratuitous detail, too.

…

Who knew Horikoshi had it in him to write a whole fucking plotline about a little girl being killed and resurrected over and over and over again by some edgy yakuza fucktard for who knows how many months? Possibly even years? All for some bum ass ‘Quirk Stopping’ bullets?

…

Damn, I was no longer hungry.

TAP.

TAP.

CRACK.

“Let’s get the bill and dip,” I murmured, half-lidded eyes glancing dispassionately down at where the unconscious tapping of my finger had just split the six-inch thick wood of our corner booth cleanly down the middle. 

My Dimensional Inventory ripped its way across the floor in a flash of electric blue and sterling silver, eating the two circular chunks of petrified wood before they could clatter against the floor and create a disturbance. I was grateful that the Neko no Mori was such a laidback establishment - other than the blushing cat-girl that had shown us to our booth, the cafe was mostly empty. “I’ll throw in extra for the broken table. Think they take Number-Man black cards?”

Cassie stared at me, wide-eyed, a fat, ugly Persian cat scrambling to flee from within the confines of her arms. “Jason, wait- we haven’t even ordered anything. And we can’t j-just blow them up and walk away! There’s too many variables. You need to calm down, sir.”

I blinked. “I am calm.”

“Bullshit!”

“Listen-”

Hidden Intuition’s disembodied voice, unbidden and unsanctioned, threaded through the interior of my skull like whispers of wind. You are not calm. You are pissed. You are outraged. You are going to blow up every Shie Hassaikai compound you can find and rip Kai Chisaki apart, piece by piece, after saving Eri. You-

…

Damn it.

“Alright, yeah. Maybe I’m not calm. But the fuck does it matter? You told me this so I’d save her,” I sighed, pissed off and frustrated but with no viable target to channel that anger towards. 

My hand clenched and unclenched by my sides, fingers twitching to begin tapping against the smooth fabric of my pants. I was conscious of that annoying little habit now, though; I rotated my wrist, digging my hand into my pocket and furrowing a bemused brow at my frowning girlfriend. “You said you can find where their compound is, right? We head there now, I can lockdown the whole fuckin’ place in a time bubble. No one gets in, no one gets out. Whole place’ll be swept in a literal nanosecond from the outside lookin’ in, from the courtyard to the laboratory.”

“Easy sweep, sure,” she snorted, leaning over our non-existent table and jabbing a bedazzled fingernail into my chest, “Except like sixty percent of the bastards in the Shie Hassaikai don’t even know about the fucked up bullshit Overhaul’s doing to that poor girl. You’re just gonna, what- storm in and torch a bunch of old gangsters, Jay? Are we going full murder hobo now? Because I know that’s not who you are.” 

The ugly, pug-nosed little fatty in her arms raised a pink-beaned paw, swiping its stubby claws lazily in my direction. “Mrrrr’oooow~!”

“Exactly my point!” My insane girlfriend squeezed the cat even tighter against her chest, the smoldering heat in her pink and blue gaze cooling down into something a bit more mischievous as she pouted at me, “Duchess says to stop being such a meathead tsundere and actually use your super swollen brain meat, Jason. Breathe, take a step back, and just think. We go in there like Doomguy and paint the walls red everywhere, it gives Overhaul time to do all kinds of crap to cover his ass. Do we really wanna risk that?”

I opened my mouth.

Cassie and ‘Duchess’ scowled at me.

I closed my mouth.

And I used my brain.

… It was harder than I thought to rein in that ‘super sexy but super spooky urge to slaughter any and all threats’. I wasn’t a morally righteous guy. Hell, I’d said it before and I’d continue to say it for as long as I lived - I wasn’t even really a hero. I was just a selfish, greed, and possessive man given a lot of power by a magical Goddess that saw something in me that no other being did, and I had to figure out how the fuck I was going to use this power for the rest of eternity. 

There was no guidebook. 

There was no tutorial. 

All I had were the home-grown morals that my mother raised me with, an otherworldly voice that was constantly amused by the thought of me in danger, and two extremely beautiful and loving women for whom I’d destroy entire planets for if push came to shove, and shove came to all-out magical war-crimes. I was slowly learning how to care more for those outside of my immediate circle, and becoming the Patron Protector of Brockton Bay was a huge leap for me in more ways than one, but that did nothing to dull the sharpness nor the heat of my vengefulness.

It was almost dizzying - the realization that I’d killed well over a hundred and fifty men over the course of three and a half months.

From a normal civilian living in a shity apartment in New York to a veritable divine lifeform slaying dozens of men with one overcharged attack.

I didn’t feel bad about killing. I wasn’t sure if I was even capable of it. 

But did I want to kill wantonly, without purpose? Did I want to just slaughter ‘criminals’, throwing them all under a single umbrella of ‘shitty’, and go about my day like some untouchable Demi-God marking shit off his ‘vengeance check-list’, uncaring of collateral?

Was that the type of man I wanted to be?

The answer came to me immediately.

Fuck no. My entire soul recoiled at the very thought.

“... You’re right, Cass. I’m sorry. Lost my cool for a second there.”

I opened my eyes, having closed them at some point during my introspective monologuing. Cassie’s scowl was gone, replaced by a small, pink-glossed smile that was equally as loving as it was devastatingly patient. She set ‘Duchess’ onto the booth seat beside her, where it promptly curled into a sulky white loaf, and rose from her side of the nonexistent table in order to plop herself right on top of my lap. 

Of course, with me being the hopeless sap that I was, I let her. In fact, I even went a step further and wrapped my arms around her body, pressing her back firmly into my chest and digging the tips of my fingers beneath the snug waistband of her pants. My nails formed divots into the warm, deliciously plush softness of her hips, and I inhaled the familiar and comforting scent of strawberries and cream that wafted up from her short black hair.

Her scent helped burn away the last lingering edges of my rage, like a balm poured over an open wound. I still wanted blood, and badly, but I could think clearly again. 

I could plan.

“That’s my Jason,” Cassie whispered, her voice low and teasing, tilting her head up and nearly crossing her eyes to peer at me. “Knew you were in there somewhere, behind all the murder and edge and ‘rah rah rah’. No crashing out when you have me here to keep you grounded, capische? Unless it’s warranted.”

I huffed out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, leaning down ever so slightly to brush my lips across her forehead. Her smile widened into a self-satisfied grin in response, dimpled cheeks growing warm and pink. “I make no promises, but I’ll do my best. Now, let’s figure out how we’re gonna save this little girl and deliver untold amounts of kick-ass to the Shie Hassaikai, yeah?”

Cassie smacked her fist into her palm.

“All according to keikaku. I’ve had my VIs working ever since we left the USJ,” she crowed victoriously, hurrying to reach up and tap both of her index fingers against the sides of her MagiLink headset. Its visor reactivated in a flash of pink and blue light, its holographic display materializing in front of her upper face like some sort of technological mirage. Cass was immediately fiddling with controls and screens that I couldn’t see, her cute little forehead pulled down into a focused frown. “Do you mind-“

“Mm.”

I was already on it.

It came instinctively; I pulled my hands free from the warmth of Cassie’s tummy and hips, and slid my finger across a static-charged thread of Azyr, manipulating the infinitesimal amount of Blue Wind with an ease and skill built from three months of experience and a healthy dose of Omni-Disciplinary Mage hax. I didn’t need a full spell - just a one-way shield of magic weaved around our little corner of the cafe that dampened any escaping sounds and compressed it into white noise. 

It was effectively the opposite of what I did whenever I was flying quickly and needed a magical buffer to block the wind. Reverse-engineering that little technique was no harder than breathing for me at this point. The zing of ozone and static electricity quickly overwhelmed that of baked goods; a familiar and comforting scent that made me feel strangely nostalgic.

“Shield’s up,” I drawled, watching lazily as Duchess, its fur standing on end, stood up its fat little ball and scampered away further into the cafe. “And the ugly lil’ cat’s gone. Guess it doesn’t like magic.”

Matter of fact, Rachel’s monster dogs didn’t, either, unless it was Ghur that I was calling upon. 

Interesting.

“Duchess will be fine,” Cassie replied distractedly, her nose wrinkled in concentration, “And she’s beautiful, you jerk. Anyways, momma’s got a lot of data coming your way, so try to keep up. My Pathfinding VI’s not coded for this world, but outside of a few irregularities - such as this entire fricking city not existing back on Earth - my geomagnetic trace-mapping subroutine is still pulling an almost 1:1 ratio when it comes to the topographical layout of Japan. Things are close enough for the VI to simulate the few anomalies it does detect.”

“Type shit,” I nodded along, trying my best to look wise and thoughtful.

Judging by the amused grin on her face, I wasn’t fooling anyone..

“Which means…  Voila! All their bases are belong to us!”

“Old meme. Boooo.”

With a wild, overtly theatrical gesture that failed to invoke even the slightest bit of awe or respect in me, Cassie materialized a fan of blue, translucent holographic windows into existence above our booth, circling the two of us in a smooth arc of scrolling data, layered maps, blinking pings, and Japanese topography. The low lighting of the café caught on the edges of each projection, bathing Cassie’s face in a soft glow that made her look like something halfway between a high-speed Cyberpunk netrunner and a dorky, overly excited girly girl.

For a moment, I could only just sit there, quietly impressed in spite of myself. 

Splayed across the main screen was a fractured but recognizable set of map hexes - digitized terrain scans of Japan’s southern half, with individual grids cross-hatched in different colored tags.

At least ten blinking red points were shimmering across the map like pustules of rot.

“There,” she said, pointing at the largest blinking red circle with her pinky. “Main compound. Osaka. I’d bet my left nip that that’s where Eri’s being kept. Based on cross-traffic frequency, the investigations of a nearby Agency, and the fact that it’s the only node pulling consistent intermittent encrypted signals between the hours of midnight and four A.M.? It has to be.”

I leaned forward, eyes narrowing on the soft red glow pulsing over a section of central Osaka. “And the others?”

She tapped through a few layers. “Tokyo, obviously. Kanazawa. Shizuoka. Wakayama. Kōchi. A weird one hidden in the outskirts of Beppu, probably under one of those old bathhouses. All spread-out enough to require a whole ass travel itinerary if we were trying to knock out the network in a single trip through Kansai.”

I didn’t even bother questioning her sudden knowledge of Japanese geography. It almost certainly came with the territory of being a borderline hikikomori, and she sounded way too confident for me to seriously doubt her.

“We’re not taking a road-trip through Japan,” I frowned, tapping my finger softly against the side of Cassie’s fishnet clad thighs. My eyes flickered over the holographic screens, A Rarefied Mind already cementing them permanently in the recesses of my brain. “I don’t know how the relationship between time works with our jump over to this Earth, and the last thing I wanna do is take a week-long vacation over here, wormhole back to Bet, and discover that a whole month passed while we were gone touring Akihabara.”

Cassie winced, shuddering in dread at the thought. “Amy would think we died. She’d be fucking devastated. And then there’s Sherr, and Riley, and everyone else…”

“Exactly why we’re getting this done tonight. Let the heroes and the police handle the mundane shit - we get Eri, we fuck up Overhaul, and we kill the bastards who helped him torture her. Then we dip out and leave the rest for clean-up.” I surmised.

“Hmmm, alright then. I can’t think of anything better. Sounds like a plan.” 

Satisfied, I reached into my coat, opening a slit in reality the size of a plate, and grabbed a small, velvet pouch from the interior of my Dimensional Inventory. It contained the last remnants of the gems and jewelry I’d purchased while working on some of my magical projects for Invictus - a couple handful of sapphires, rings, rubies, and a few finger-sized emeralds. Under Cassie’s curious eye, I placed it on the seat beside us and stood, pulling the petite girl to her feet alongside me.

“That should cover the table I fucked up. And then some. Hopefully.”

Cassie only blinked. “You’re the weirdest sugar daddy I’ve ever had, y’know that?.”

I gave her a deadpanned glance. “I’m the only sugar daddy you’ve ever had.”

“Touche,” she leaned up, flicking me on the tip of my nose. “Anyways, let’s go before the next train arrives! We can take the Shinkasen straight from Tokyo Station to Osaka. The Nozomi line’ll get us there in just under two hours, and the view of Mount Fuji on the way will be tooootally worth it. Plus-” she gave me a pointed look “-I’ve always wanted to ride one in person. Weeb bucket list item. Non-negotiable.”

“You’re aware we can teleport, right?”

“I’m aware you can teleport. But I can’t. Yet. And this is about the experience, Jason. Let me have this.”

I thought about it for a moment, and then realized that I wouldn’t have it in me to deny her anyway. So I just sighed.

“I spoil you, y’know?”

“Is that a yes?”

“... ‘Ight. Fuck it.”

“YESSSS!”

_____________________________________________

The train ride to Osaka only took about ninety minutes. 

Due to our lack of modern or (this) earthly currency, we had to commit a minor crime in order to actually experience it; that is, casting Take no Heed, shrouding ourselves within its Gray Magic, and sneaking aboard. I personally thought that the whole thing was kinda dumb and reiterated that fact after we actually got to the station, but Cassie’s disappointed little pout and dejected surrender attacked me in all of my most critical weak-spots as a self-titled ‘sugar daddy boyfriend’.

In other words, I fucking folded like laundry.

Thus, a trip that should’ve taken half an hour at the most with ample teleportation spam took us more than double that amount of time, and I got to witness a cackling Cassie take cute selfies with a multitude of confused and exotic-looking civilians. Anime Japan was simply not ready for someone like her. Admittedly, the unnecessary detour was worth seeing the excitement and joy on her face… Because by the time we arrived at the Shin-Osaka Transit Station and made our way up into the blistering hot Osaka sun, most of that glee had melted away and hardened into a cold determination - for Cassie, and for me. 

Did I expect that I’d be saving the life of another traumatized little girl tortured and abused by a maniacal, black-hearted villain when I finally decided to take the leap into hopping the wider multiverse?

Not at fucking all.

But now that I knew what was going on, there was a burning in my soul. A desire, bordering on a need. Like bellows in a forge, it fanned the smoldering flames of my anger and determination, both heating and cooling my desire to save and protect Eri until that desire was no longer an uncontrollable ember, but a raging bonfire of vengeance contained within a tempered spear of retribution. It kept me focused. ‘Locked in’. And though I shot the shit with Cassie and enjoyed her little dorky weebisms, that flame never flickered.

That all sounds chuuni as fuck, but it was the truth. There was something almost nostalgic about this feeling. Foundational. As if it was merely common sense that I would protect this abandoned child and wreak havoc on the monsters who hurt her, if only because that was what I was going to do anyways. Because that was who and what I was.

I would save and protect Eri, just as I saved and protected Brockton Bay. 

And I would beat the fuck out of Overhaul, just as I beat the fuck out of Brockton Bay’s vilest supervillains and an honest to God Endbringer.

Protection and Victory.

There was something about those two concepts that spoke to me. That felt so intimately familiar, so close that I could reach forward and grab ahold of them with my fingers, and yet I simply couldn’t. Not yet. Not without more…something.

Damn it.

“Yo, baby girl. Wakey wakey!”

Small, manicured fingernails pinched my right ass cheek, and I was abruptly yanked from my reverie. And just as well; I felt like there was a wall there in my understanding - one that even Hidden Intuition couldn’t break through. Wasting time in meditation, stubbornly attempting to parse what was going on… Well, now just wasn’t the time.

“I don’t remember giving consent to asscheek assault.”

I swiftly extracted Cassie’s sneaky little fingers from my ass and tugged the petite dork into my side, wrapping my arm securely around her waist. Take No Heed had already been cast again, the dark, smoggy grayness of Ulgu still thick and cloying in the atmosphere around us, so no one paid us much mind as we made our way down the sidewalk. 

Cassie smirked, gently digging into my obliques with her elbow. “Shouldn’t be wearing what you’re wearing then, toots. A guy’s got needs, and you’ve got the whole cake factory back there. Let’s just cut the middle-man already and head back to my place.”

I groaned. “What is this divorced, thirty-six year old construction worker roleplay?”

“Hiyaaaah… You’re right, that was in totally bad taste. I should’ve went for ‘wine mom seducing her best friend’s son’. But whatever, you live and you learn. Check this out, though!” 

Cassie flicked a finger, and one of her holographic screens materialized in front of us. It appeared as some sort of pink, digitized mini-map of Osaka, according to the words hovering beneath the actual map portion, and as I looked, two small white dots - Cass and I - were moving up a street that branched off into several different avenues and roads. However, we were also following that glowing, ghostly blue line of Clairvoyance as it led us towards our destination, which was labeled as ‘Shie Hassaikai HQ’.

Floating to the right of the minimap, somehow both sleek and bolded and written in all caps, was a blinking, 14.7 MILES REMAINING.

“We’re here,” she pointed out the obvious, and in response, the mini-map zoomed in on where our little white dots were slowly moving along the silvery blue GPS tracker line. “The Yodogawa Ward of Osaka. Our target, assuming we’re sticking to the ‘infiltrate and extract’ plan, is located about fifteen miles south-southwest of the station we just left, in the Hirano Ward.” 

My ridiculously intelligent girlfriend flicked a second screen down to join the mini-map, and I took it all in with one cursory glance. It appeared to be screenshots of photos, several of them, taken from various distances away from what could only be Overhaul’s main Headquarters. Other than the reinforced wooden gate blocking off the entrance, the buildings both surrounding it and beyond it seemed awfully plain and non-descript. There were several trees behind the gate, lining the large courtyard that led up to the main entrance, but that was the only real color in the photos. 

It was suburban Hell.

Above the pictures of the compound, however, was one man’s headshot seemingly caught from a side-view. He had brown hair, hazel-colored eyes, and a black, red, and yellow plague doctor mask that stuck out from his lower face like a beak.

I’d seen him a couple times on the internet, but had never given him more than a bored, cursory glance.

Kai Chisaki.

I rubbed my chin as I glanced over the screens. “Guessin’ you nabbed this from some overworked detective’s personal files?”

“A dossier from the Nighteye Agency, actually,” she corrected me, shrugging her slim shoulders. “Don’t know what interns he has over there, but they kept classified documents in the cloud. You never keep classified documents in the cloud. It lets sneaky little hackers like me snatch ‘em away, if you know where to look.”

“And it has nothing to do with your overpowered, out of context coding software powered by magical runes?”

Cassie huffed. “I made those! For the most part. Potato potato - look, point is we’re right on track. One of the first things I did after developing my Pathfinder VI and getting that sweet, sweet Magitech perk was figure out a way to implement the effects of Illusion magic into my VI’s programming. It’s still wonky, and there’s some bugs in the code that I still need to squash for prolonged use, but it seems to be working fine enough for this mission. Now-“

“Wait,” I blinked, snapping my eyes back towards the mini-map. Now that I was paying more attention, the blue route line wasn’t the generic deep blue you’d usually see on Google Maps. It was more of a silvery, almost ethereal blue, and even in its digitized state the edges of the line seemed to shift and insulate ever so slightly - like an illusionary mist.

A disbelieving chuckle emanated from my chest. “You merged Clairvoyance with a navigational AI? That’s fucking impressive, Cass. Good shit.”

To no one’s surprise, the praise immediately had the petite girl flushing pink and grinning. “VI. But yeah, well, y’know… I’m totes the 2011 female Einstein and all that, hehe. Shucks. But um- Yes! Clairvoyance is almost at full integration, and once it’s complete, I plan to implement it into a custom tracking slash navigation program for all Invictus members, with certain safety locks in place of course. It’s powered entirely by MagiCode, so I could even push it out to- Wait, baby, what are you doing?”

We’d only lifted a scant half a foot off of the ground, my arm still wrapped securely and protectively around Cassie’s waist, when she noticed the difference in altitude. Her hands clenched against my sides, fingernails digging ineffectively into my skin, but I paid it no mind. My eyes were on the mini-map; more specifically, the line of Clairvoyance, and the direction it was leading me towards.

Such a useful fucking spell. And as much as I adored Cassie and all of her hacker knowledge, all I needed was the route. My spear and magic could do the rest.

I gave her wriggling self an apologetic pinch on the butt. “Sorry, you were starting to yap your cute little trap again, and I don’t like leaving shit sitting if I can flush the toilet. There’s nothin’ else here for us to strategize. We’re breaching their compound. Now. Just close your mouth, look pretty, and enjoy the ride.”

“Jason, I swear to Avalon if you-“

Wind surged around our bodies as I abruptly accelerated upwards.

BOOM!

… But I made sure to not break the sound barrier until we were a safe distance over the Osaka foot traffic.

Cassie was screaming something unintelligible and more-than-likely gross and offensive at me, and due to the weave of Azyr that protected us from the very real downsides of flying faster than the speed of sound, I heard it all as if she was screaming it directly into my ear… Which she was. And she was clutching onto my body with a surprising amount of strength, too.

But as she said before, I had ‘locked in’. 

My focus was half on following the holographic mini-map, which seemed as if it was struggling to synchronize to how fucking fast I was going, and half on finally accepting my reward for saving the kids at the USJ before All-Might arrived. I doubted I’d need anything more than what I already had to handle Overhaul and his gang of burnt-out criminals, but arrogance was anathema to achieving Victory.

You used everything in your arsenal to win if saving the life of a little girl was on the line.

As if the Celestial Grimoire sensed my resolve, the sound of Cassie’s screams and the muggy heat from the blaring Osaka sun abruptly faded away. My vision wavered and blinked, city lights overtaken by a darkness that was then overtaken by the sight of the cosmos, filled with too many stars to count in one lifetime. The book of my soul - huge, infinite - materialized before me as if it had never left, fluttering its endless pages until it came to a halt at the TRANSFORMATION chapter.

There was only one perk there. Animal Form. But I knew that another one would quickly be joining it.

‘Let’s get to it. Roll.”

The command came easy, emboldened by nothing more than my willpower and intent. Words burned across the pale parchment before I could even blink.

Dragon (DxD Universe) - Major Might Perk

Though you may start as a young and inexperienced Dragon, your raw power is already massive as the strongest race to exist in the supernatural world. Your mana is also very easy to manipulate, though it may not come to you as easily as a Devil. With the choice of this perk, you must pick an element, and this element will be much easier for you to control. You do have a big weakness to Dragon Slaying equipment, which can put you down fairly easily. However, these effects will get weaker as you grow stronger as a dragon.

I ‘blinked’. 

Read through the text again.

Hell, if I could have in this comic time-locked soulscape, I probably would have scratched my head too. Because while I knew fuck all about the shitty harem titty anime known as High Scho DxD, I did know that dragons were a universally declared powerhouse of epic proportions… And more often than not, they were massive. Scaly. Had a tendency to kidnap princesses and destroy villages.

I wasn’t worried about the last two, but…

‘Yo, Grimmy,’ I tossed my thoughts out into the aether, watching warily as the astral spellbook began to flutter through pages on its own volition, ‘What kinda dragon are we talkin’ here? Dragonborn? Dragon Knight? Wyvern? And what kinda elements am I working with?’

…

Nothing.

About what I’d expected.

‘Fine,’ I snorted, metaphorically flipping my own soul the bird, ‘Fuck it then. If you wanna be coy, lock in ‘Magic’ as my element. Let’s see how much bullshit I can get up to with tha-‘

Reality came back to me in a flash of stardust and light, before I could even finish my thought. It was as if someone had simply pressed the ‘unpause’ button on the very fabric of my existence, and time continued as if nothing had ever happened. Cassie was still screaming into my ear, her petite and soft body held securely against my chest like a koala bear. We were still soaring over Osaka - blazing neon signs, mirror-glass skyscrapers, pulsing life, and urban sprawl stretching to the distant curve of the horizon, all bathed in the hazy, orange-gold light of late afternoon. 

The city sprawled below was alive with motion and electricity, completely unaware of the multiversal, superpowered duo flying miles above their head. We were a blur, slicing through the upper winds like a missile of pink and black, rapidly approaching the densely packed concrete jungle of the Hirano Ward. Everything was normal.

Well, almost everything.

My body felt hot. Egregiously hot. But it didn’t hurt. Instead, it felt… comfortable. Familiar.

And then it hit me.

No, it would be more accurate to say it awoke.

A pulse inside my soul.

A rumble in my bones.

A howl that had no sound, only heat and power and the telltale bite of the arcane. It was an ancient howl. Hungry. Crowned.

DRAGON.

It didn’t come off as a question.

It was more of a command.

A pulse of primal, godlike authority exploded outward from my core, like I’d just uncorked the tip of a spear aimed directly into the fabric of reality. Dragon, the perk I’d only just rolled from the Grimoire… It wasn’t just a buff. It wasn’t a blank upgrade to my stats. It wasn’t a cool ability to toggle on and off like some ability from a video-game.

It was an irrevocable change.

And it hit me like a star collapsing in on itself.

I screamed.

Not from fear. Not even from pain.

But from power.

It tore out of my throat like a spell gone wrong - raw, primal, involuntary. My vision warped, doubled, split into layers of sight I didn’t recognize. Every nerve in my body ignited in wildfire. I didn’t feel pain - not exactly. What I felt was a fundamental, absolute rewriting of self, a remaking of my essence at the atomic, molecular, and a shit ton more levels even deeper and more esoteric than that. Pain was nothing in comparison. Even I wasn’t sure of what, exactly, I was feeling. According to this perk, I wasn’t becoming a Dragon.

No.

I was one, and I always had been.

Reality simply hadn’t realized it yet.

The Grimoire seized the moment for what it was and turned its infinite power to full-tilt. Raw, dense, foreign magic flooded my limbs like a tidal wave, surging through muscle, bone, and blood and irrevocably enriching it all with its potent energy. Mana burned in my lungs. My body abruptly stiffened, muscle swelling up and then contracting back down into a dense hardness that felt like steel bands folding in on themselves. My bones trembled beneath my flesh, cracking and elongating in unnatural spurts. My ribs ached as they ever so slightly expanded outward - not enough to be outwardly noticeable, but enough for me to notice. Enough for me to acknowledge the growth of something powerful above my newly rebuilt lungs.

The sound of Cassie’s gasping brought me out of my dazed inner-inspection. Her hands - so much softer and cooler now against the burning heat of my skin - grasped at my cheeks with an almost animalistic desperation, all humor and amusement gone in the face of my ‘transformation’. “Jay! JAY! W-What the fuck is going on?!”

“Dragon Perk,” I gritted out from between teeth too sharp to be normal. There was a pressure in my body, like a shaken up can of soda moments away from exploding. It wasn’t necessarily a pleasant feeling. “I’m alright. We’re good. Just… lotta changes. Lotta power.”

My voice was normally a deep, smooth Southern drawl - one that had gotten me many a girls’ number back in high school - but when I spoke now, there was an almost smoky, dangerous growl lurking behind the edges. Less milk chocolate, more dark and spicy.   

Cassie, for her part, immediately understood my terse reply. Her mouth promptly fell open, fingernails digging into skin that refused to even acknowledge her unintentional grasp. Horror bled into naked, unadulterated excitement once she realized that my scream had not, in fact, originated from sheer agony. “You… You’re turning into a fucking dragon? Like, horned, fire-breathing, building-sized dragon?! Jason, that is so. Frickin’. COOL-”

Something popped between my shoulder-blades, forcibly yanking my attention away from Cassie’s fangirling-

And my back burst.

Twin explosions of flesh and light erupted from behind me, bringing with it the first, and I felt my already tenuous grasp on Take no Heed began to waver and fracture at the edges of my frayed concentration. I didn’t have half the mind to even re-up my focus on the spell; my attention was already wrenched back towards the massive, scaly, gravity-defying wings of sleek, glimmering obsidian that had ripped themselves free of my shoulder blades. They gleamed with an incandescent magic, silvery-blue mana thrumming, barely contained, between their shield-like scales.

We dropped almost fifty feet in a free-fall as I flailed midair, the wind roaring past us, my mind struggling to adjust to the weight, the sensation, the new balance, and the fact that I now had several new muscles to control out of nowhere. It only took three beats and a burst of Azyr-materialized wind to resituate myself, and then I was gliding atop that very same current, reflexively utilizing Soaring to take a load off of my tender new draconic tendons.

It was surprisingly easy to figure out.

“W-Wings. Frickin’ wings?! You have wings! Jason! You have DRAGON wings! And your eyes are fucking slitted. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod, I’m-”

“Fuckin’ hopeless,” I grinned in spite of myself, feeling my newly elongated fangs poke against my bottom lip. “Hold on, nerd. This ain’t over yet.”

Cassie’s excitement, as chaotic as it was, grounded me in a way that felt right. My mind was divided up into pieces like a piece of pie, each one struggling to quantify the changes going on in my body, but it was the awareness that my girlfriend - mine - was being held in my arms that helped keep me from going wild with these primal, draconic instincts. That mysterious growth above my lungs was burning something fierce, a pressure not unlike the world’s biggest acid reflux attack rapidly building in my chest, and I…-

Burped. Loudly. Away from my huddled mate, and up into the sky above.

FWOOOOM!

A beam of raw mana - a bright, luminous blue, gold, and silver - shot from between my pursed lips in a thick, powerful line of pure, unshaped magical energy that extended out for at least a a couple dozen feet. It didn’t move like fire; it was closer to lightning, or a laser - beaming across the sky, tearing a hole through the fluffy white clouds overhead, and fading away just as fast, leaving behind ambient motes of magic that twinkled beneath the sunrays.

“O-on the other hand, maybe we should land? Y’know, so you can have your evolution… Not flying thousands of feet above Osaka at the speed of a commercial airplane?” Cassie tried, her concern for my gastro-intestinal issues apparently overriding her rabid excitement of having a dragon boyfriend. She was staring over my right shoulder, eyes wide and awestruck - from my new claw-tipped, twenty-foot long wingspan, or the remnants of magical burp still twinkling in our tailwind, I had no fucking clue.

Not that it mattered. I was more concerned with literally everything else going on. But she did make a good point.

Calling upon my new wing muscles and adjusting the mana passively empowering my natural flight, I forcibly pulled us to a somewhat jerky stop in the middle of the sky. I hovered there, only distantly aware of my panting. I was out of breath, though not from physical exertion.

But from the stress of holding myself back.

I had to figure this out before I saved Eri, or the stealth operation would end up becoming a fucking bloodsoaked massacre.

I closed my eyes.

“Jason?”

“Give me a minute,” I murmured, wincing at the inadvertent growl in my voice. “I’m fine. Trust me. Just-”Soft lips pressed themselves against the underside of my chin, feeling my nostrils with so many scents that my head immediately began swimming. The strongest one, however, was that familiar, lovely scent of berries that Cassie used as lip-gloss. I could practically taste it on the tip of my tongue now. “I know you can handle it, Jay. I know. I’m here, okay? Whenever and however you need me.”

It was love. Pure and simple. Naked, fearless love, and a trust for me not to drop her to her death over a foreign country.

I chuckled. “Ballads are made about this kinda stuff, y’know. What the fuck even are our lives?”

Her hand smacked my shoulder playfully. “Exciting, that’s what. Now hurry up before we get hit by an airplane please. You’ll be fine, but I don’t think Stoneflesh would help me all that much…”

“Yeah, yeah. Hold on.”

Closing my eyes once again, I tightened my hold on Cassie, leaned my head down until my chin was nestled in her black hair, and inhaled her scent. This high up, Azyr was as thick as pudding - my grasp on its magic hadn’t faltered throughout my entire transformation, and it still shielded the two of us from the strong, hot winds of the Osakan evening. Outside of the sound of my breaths, and the slow, deft beating of my wings as they kept us aloft, there was nothing.

Just me, my body, and my soul.

I could feel it at the very core of my being; while Immutable Form’s functionality was still ironclad, it was also true that I’d given my consent for the Grimoire to turn me into a Dragon. When Hecate and the other Goddesses changed the way the Grimoire worked, they’d also taken away my ability to outright decline perks, meaning that regardless of anything, my choice was always between putting a complete Immutable wall up between the transformation and my body, or accepting the transformation and dealing with any unwanted changes in the aftermath.

The Grimoire, and the Dragon perk,wanted me to finish the change; that was the crux of the problem, and the core reason as to why it felt as if I was trying to clench a fucking soda bottle in the cleft of my asscheeks. It wanted me to become an unshackled beast of magic incarnate, something too massive and legendary to fly unnoticed through a densely populated city. To embrace my full transformation and take my place among the stars of myth.

But I wasn’t some mindless creature.

I was Jason Black, Champion of Hecate, and Patron Saint of Brockton Bay. And while I was willing to accept becoming a dragon the Grimoire would need to realize that I transformed when I damn well wanted to fucking transform.

With Immutable Form backing my efforts, I seized control. I forced the main course of the change - my transformation into a massive, mana-breathing dragon - to effectively pause, whilst keeping the more subtle developments. I could feel the Grimoire metaphysically arguing its point, the pages in my soul shuddering with frustration and confusion, but I was inhumanly stubborn, my willpower cultivated and sharpened by the very same artifact of infinite magical potential that it now fought against. 

It struggled, but ultimately, the Grimoire listened. It obeyed. 

That soda can-like pressure slowly eased up inside of my body, and I couldn’t help but let out a quiet breath of pure, absolute relief. I felt it, even moreso now that half of my attention wasn’t focused on resisting the masculine urge to shift into a towering, reptilian beast; I was taller. Broader. Every individual muscle ached with a new strength, rippling and contracting beneath chocolate brown several times tougher than it had been minutes before. My bones were heavier. Denser. All of my senses were tuned up past ten, and at this point I wouldn’t have been surprised to see that I could fucking smell colors.

My eyes burned beneath my lids, but it was also a good burn.

When I opened them, it was as if I’d been half-blind before, despite my vision having been magically bolstered by more than one visual acuity perk. The sun was slowly beginning to lower itself in the sky, casting a dim shadow across the city that urged the traffic below to begin flicking on their headlights, but my new draconic gaze cut through the gloom like a hot knife through room-temperature butter. And even more than that, I could see far.

Extremely far.

So far, in fact, that if I looked past the snarling congestion of Hirano Ward traffic - tight, bunched-up intersections gridlocked by commuters cramming themselves through amber lights, delivery trucks huffing acrid black exhaust, and swarms of mopeds weaving through all of the chaos like angry bees - I could see the telltale gated entrance to the Shie Hassaikai compound gleaming dully in the distance.

I took a glimpse at Cassie’s minimap where it hovered off to the side.

3.9 MILES REMAINING.

… Huh. That checked out, then. The distance matched up.

It wasn’t much at first glance. 

Just another industrialist, reinforced gate nestled between squat cement walls. The kind of thing the average citizen would pass by and forget, convinced it was just another business hub or gated residential district. 

But I knew better.

From miles high in the sky, with the golden haze of early evening gilding the rooftops in molten amber, I could see it perfectly - even the sprawling courtyard that lay beyond, lined with a multitude of medium-sized trees and finely-trimmed hedges. It seemed quiet. Men patrolled its inner walls, but they weren’t dressed for war. They wore shirts with the collars popped and suit jackets without the button-downs. Business casual, or just outright casual. They looked like normal workers.

But shit, it didn’t matter how mundane it all looked.

That compound was a veritable fortress of rot. A temple of suffering.

Eri was inside.

And I was done waiting.

“Cassie,” I murmured, shifting her small body in my arms so that I held her in a bridal carry, “You ready?”

“Ready? Are you ready? I thought…” She slowly trailed off, her eyes growing wide as she stared up into my face. Her gloved hands rose again, feeling along my jaw and my cheek, her thumb pressing into the slight parting of my lips in order to poke my newly elongated canines. “... Woah. Holy shit, Jason. You’re…”

“I know,” I cut her off softly, a deep, husky chuckle escaping my newly broadened chest. “I know. But leave it for later, yeah? We’re going in fast, and we’re heading straight for the underground tunnels. I need you ready and locked in, because anyone I see down there, we’re carving up.”

It was an executive decision, and one that I was sticking beside. If I was hesitant due to moral reasons before, Dragon burned that hesitation away with overwhelming hellfire. I didn’t have time to interrogate every individual goon in the Shie Hassaikai, but that was fine. I didn’t need to massacre the entire compound.

But there was no way in Hell you had access to the super secret underground railroad and didn’t know about your Quirk-Erasing meal-ticket a couple hallways away.

They could all fucking burn.

Cassie, in her defense, didn’t even flinch at the declaration. She only nodded her head, pulled her hands away from my face, and smacked them against her cheeks. I smelled the magicka as it shattered against her skin, coalescing across her body in fragments of greenish-blue energy. 

Stoneflesh, Hidden Intuition whispered. 

My nose twitched.

“Sounds fair to me, my hot dragon bf. Let’s go kill some assholes.”

Consent received.

A lopsided, sharp-toothed grin formed on my lips. “Hold on, then.”

When I moved, I didn’t move fast enough to break the sound barrier - not this time. Take no Heed made people ignore us and forget our presence after we’d left, but they’d still be alerted by the sound and actions we took if said sound and actions were alarming or out of place enough, and this close to the Shie Hassaikai compound, I did not want to risk setting off Overhaul’s entire organization. 

Instead, three powerful beats of my wings, a downwards tilt of my body, and a subtle brush of mana saw me cut through the sky like a guillotine through silk, faster than any mundane human eye could ever hope to track. The gates of the Shie Hassaikai compound came into closer view ahead - ornate, lacquered wood bound in iron. I barely registered it as I surged over it in an ebony blur, the foggy gray edge of Take No Heed shrouding our bodies like a second skin.

I didn’t slow down. Didn’t hesitate.

Cassie stayed latched to my chest as we soared over a koi pond reflecting streaks of red and gold from the setting sun, then banked right over the central gravel path that lined up neatly with the main compound’s front entrance. I tucked my massive wings against my side, reaffirmed my grip on my petite human package, and landed with a whisper-soft thump on the worn flagstones right outside. 

No one saw. 

Or rather, everyone did - about a dozen yakuza soldiers stationed amongst the courtyard - but none of them noticed. Their eyes skipped over us. Their minds slid around us. One man lit a cigarette and stared directly at me as I scanned the courtyard, his eyes glazed and not truly seeing. Another leaned against the wooden post of a veranda, watching with dull focus as I lowered Cassie down to her feet, entirely untroubled by the impossibility of what he should have seen.

Take no Heed was an effective spell, normally.

With Holy Hexes, we may as well be completely invisible.

“Okay, this is cool,” Cassie whispered, eyes wide behind her visor as she took in the setting. “Evil yakuza fortress infiltrated by a world-hopping dragon mage and his cyber sorceress girlfriend. This is something straight out of a fucking fanfic.”

“Focus,” I murmured bemusedly, stepping past the gawking woman and approaching the finely-engraved sliding door of the main entrance. “Keep a Lesser Ward in your off-hand at all times, and stick close to my side.”

“Aye aye!”

It took a bit of focus and willpower of my own, but I’d already wrestled my dragonhood down into relative obedience; my wings, having been folded around my body in a dark, scaly mockery of a cloak, promptly sank back into my shoulder-blades with only the slightest pang of discomfort. I did a quick about-face as it did so, swapping my too-tight casual-wear for my Avalon costume that was just as snug on my newly-grown body as the previous outfit.

Annoying, but not impossible to deal with.

“Damn…”

Ignoring my girlfriend’s quiet appreciation - and holding back a very non-stealthy snort - I pushed open the sliding door and slipped inside of the main compound, shadowed swiftly by Cass. The lobby was one of old, lacquered wood - the kind of place that would hate to see a Firebolt-u flung its way. Ornamental blades hung in recessed alcoves, while the scent of old incense lingered like smoke in a dirty back alley. Men moved throughout - real gangster men, hard-eyed and harder-souled, their exposed forearms and chests tattooed with dark ink - and yet not a single one looked our way.

Cassie’s silent gasp immediately caught my attention.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head, stepping ahead of me and examining the rather sizable room. “Just… This is basically a carbon copy of what I remember watching in the anime, during the Shie Hassaikai raid episode. It’s kinda creepy to see it all in-person now, considering its… everything. Anyways-”

She gestured with one hand towards a corridor that led off towards the right, and a quick glance down at the minimap she’d left me with revealed that it was right on track. “Follow me. There’s a secret entrance we’ll need to get through to access the tunnels underground, and I can brute-force the ‘secret’ code.”

I glanced back over at the thugs.

Complete and utter ignorance.

“Right,” I shrugged, turning away, “After you.”

To my surprise, Cassie could move surprisingly fast if the stakes were high enough. 

I stayed on her heels, a protective shadow, as she sprinted down the hallway and passed at least two different spots that I could’ve assumed to be ‘secret entrances’. But after about half a minute of running, she stopped in front of a decorative potted plant sitting in an alcove that would’ve looked benign in any other context - a ceramic pot of dark soil, housing a thick-stemmed bamboo shoot. Cassie carelessly pushed the plant aside and leaned into the alcove, her fingers moving like a pianist’s across the panel of wood that had been hidden by the bamboo. 

The pressure plates gave only the faintest tactile resistance, but I could see from behind her head that her visor had pinged each one with a soft tone, highlighting their correct sequence in soft, pastel colors that I couldn’t even guess the order of. Hidden Intuition probably could, but there was no reason to try and do everything myself.

This was a joint operation.

“I’m in,” she growled under her breath, more for effect than necessity.

I tried not to let the cringe show on my face. “Nice work, Otacon.”

A low click echoed through the narrow hall.

With a breath of stale, displaced air, the alcove shifted. Components hidden from naked sight stirred in the architecture - joints sliding, beams lifting, groaning just faintly as a panel of the wall receded like the unlocking of a puzzle box. As the wooden panel slid seamlessly into the wall, a slate-gray stairwell unfurled, descending down into a dark, inky blackness that could have easily been ripped straight out of an Outlast game. Steel walls. No railing. No light - at least at its entrance.

The temperature drop was drastic. I felt the sting of it in my teeth, though my body was running a bit too hot to properly acknowledge it. 

Cassie shivered, pressing herself closer into my side. “Why is it always creepy-ass murder stairs and dark, seedy laboratories? Why can’t supervillains ever build a secret beach resort or something?”

“You can leave this place a one star Yelp review once we’re done pickin’ it apart. C’mon, before they notice the secret entrance ain’t too secret anymore.”

I weaved a quick, toasty web of Aqshy around the two of us as we descended down the drafty staircase, the Red Wind practically rushing to obey the commanding force of my will. At the same time, all it took was a slight flexing of my magic to summon forth my Armament, the ornate spear materializing in my right hand in swirling fractals of silver, blue, and gold. It was nearly unnoticeable as of yet considering the fact that I hadn’t casted any real spells, but I could already feel the difference between my current mana and my reserves from before I became a dragon.

What was previously a roaring waterfall within my soul now bubbled inside like a volcano ready to explode; still controlled, still dormant until I was ready to unleash its wrath, but it was also irrevocably more. More dense. More potent. More powerful. And being who and what I was, I’d never turn down even more magic.

If Holy Hexes scaled my basic spells into more advanced forms in accordance to my own magical power, my base magical power just skyrocketed by lieu of becoming a ‘magical’ Dragon - whatever all of that entailed. Ultimately it was something to explore in full later, when I wasn’t under both a time crunch and attempting to be lowkey, but wouldn’t it be nice to go to a world where magic was freely and universally explored…?

“This way,” Cassie whispered once we finally reached the bottom, and I shoved away all thoughts of magical training fled my mind, swapped with that same burning, vengeful focus that hadn’t left my soul since I’d learned about Eri’s fate. 

We moved.

The tunnel system was extensive - straight lines, sharp turns, and every smooth concrete surface too clean and symmetrical. Here and there, another yakuza passed by on patrol, but none of them saw us. None of them even twitched. Take No Heed clung to us like an oily mist, warping the minds of every single guard we came across, and I made sure to dedicate their faces to memory as we went because each and every one of the fuckers would die before this rescue operation was fully over.

That was guaranteed.

Eventually, moreso due to the efficacy of our magical GPS than actual speed, Cassie and I turned a corner and stepped into a stretch of hallway bright with harsh, fluorescent lights that gleamed down from panels in the ceiling. It looked virtually the same as everywhere else in the veritable labyrinth; concrete walls and a floor so smooth it looked like porcelain, but at the far end stood a heavy blast door, sealed tight, with some sort of high-tech, biometric scanner attached to the wall beside it. Sitting directly outside said door, hunched on wooden stools, were two men.

They looked bored.

One was tall and muscular, flipping through a magazine - some tabloid thing with bare, glossy blue skin gleaming on the front cover. The other was much skinnier with long, spindly fingers that carefully held a tall can of coffee between them. He nonchalantly sipped from it, beady black eyes half lidded as they stared directly at us. Both of them wore black vests, communication earpieces, and had that same vacant, morally-bankrupt stillness I’d come to associate with the men who worked down here. The men stopped thinking of themselves as people the moment they took a job involving cages and children.

At my side, Cassie eyed the blast door and scanner with a critical intensity. Her visor flashed blue, and a small, translucent screen that I couldn’t see flashed in front of her face. “This is new. Don’t remember seeing any real security tech in the anime, and I shut down the few hidden cameras I noticed as we were moving… But this lock is advanced shit. Encrypted, too. I can break it, but it’ll take me about half a minute. Maybe less.”

“That’s fine,” I murmured, already stepping forward. “Try to make it quick. And scramble their headsets if you can, yeah?”

“Already did.”

That was all the assurance I needed.

Take No Heed was still active. They didn’t see me standing ten feet away - or at least, they didn’t register it. Their minds filtered my presence out like background static.

But that was about to change.

I moved.

One breath, one readjustment on the shaft of my spear, and I had already teleported into their personal space. I pivoted to my left and jerked the gleaming, wickedly sharp head of the eight-foot-long weapon up through the softness of Salad Finger’s chin. Flesh parted with an ease that I’d long since gotten used to, bone and muscle practically disintegrating against unnaturally sharp metal as I skewered the guard up through his mouth and out the top of his head like a shishkebab. There was no warning. No time to act. He went limp in my arms before he could even register pain, and I yanked my spear back with a vicious precision, letting him crumple noiselessly to the floor. 

The illusion had already shattered the instant I acted - Take No Heed collapsing under the weight of lethal intent - but that moment of realization came far, far too late for them.

The more muscular yakuza goon turned with professional reflexes, drawing the sleek black pistol on his hip in one practiced, if panicked motion, but I was already inside his guard.

My left hand snapped forward.

Claws I hadn’t even realized I’d grown punched through his sternum with all the effort of pressing fingers into soft clay. I felt his heart rupture beneath the pads of my fingers. Heat. Pressure. Wet muscle. His body jerked once, spasmed - and then he fell backwards, ass over kettle, leaving a large, hand-sized hole where his heart used to be. It spurted gouts of blood now, burning into nothingness the moment it reached the inner field of my Aqshy shield - a weaving of Red Wind that I intensified the second I realized how messy my coup de grace was.

I still had his heart in my hand. I dropped it now, and as an after-thought, burned it and its owner to a crisp with a muttered word and a wave of white flame. The other body followed right after, and the pistols and ashes were dropped into by Dimensional Inventory. It was a process that I had to get used to now, because I was going to end up burning a lot of corpses before the night was over.

Cassie looked over from where she’d approached the scanner, her visor flashing pink and blue as it finalized her work. She said nothing about the corpses, but neither did she seem squeamish or bothered by them, either. My girl was growing used to the sight of blood. “Door’s unlocked, and the waypoint’s flashing blue right behind them. This is where they’re keeping Eri.”

I nodded once, retracting the gleaming lethality of my claws back into flesh with a simple, instinctive twitch of the muscle. That fresh ache of bodily transformation faded with the scent of copper in my nostrils, and the rush of violence that burned behind my eyes dimmed to a low, sated thrum.

There was a simplicity to killing like that - vicious, immediate, and necessary. No speeches. No incantations. Just violence and sheer, overwhelming Victory. I didn’t not like it. At least now I had something to bond with Rachel and Trainwreck over.

The blast door gave a low chuff as hydraulics hissed and disengaged, parting slowly with the grinding churn of steel on steel. A cold draft spilled out, heavy with mildew and sterilized metal. Behind it was a room that shouldn’t have existed. Not because it was hidden or because it was inaccessible -  but because it was wrong. Morally offensive in the way only something painstakingly designed to look innocent could be.

The first thing I noticed was the wallpaper. It was sky blue, speckled with painted clouds, like something out of a daycare catalog. The kind of image adults forced onto things they assumed children should like. Beneath it, the paint was peeling in places, as if the illusion of care couldn’t quite hold up under reality’s weight. The bed was small, metal-framed, topped with a cotton-candy pink blanket that looked cheap and scratchy. Toys were piled in the corner - mostly unopened, some still in boxes, as though placed there not for play, but to fill a quota. On a metal side table dingy with rust, an untouched cup of juice had gone warm.

And in the center of it all, sitting on the edge of the mattress in a ratty hospital gown too large for her body, was her.

Eri.

Her arms were wrapped around her knees, head bowed so far inwards that her face was buried in the crook of her elbows. Bandages ringed her limbs - some white, some stained rust-brown from dried blood that no one had bothered to change. Her hair was long and tangled, a lifeless gray-white curtain draped over her like a shroud of protection. Even from here, I could hear the soft, hiccuping sobs she tried so hard to muffle.

She didn’t look up. Didn’t flinch.

Eri is sad, Hidden Intuition murmured, its ethereal voice blase and emotionless. Eri is unsurprised. Eri is too used to the door opening at this time of day. Eri is too used to monsters walking through it. Eri has given up. Eri is defeated. Eri-

Enough.

I eased forward with soft, careful footsteps, my new draconic blood burning like lava and thermite within my veins. Cold, righteous fury threatened to overtake me, to warp my lips into a chilling grin and force my eyes to glow with barely-restrained power, but now wasn’t the time to let my bloodlust free. Instead, I let my spear fade from my hand in motes of magic, lowering my shoulders and relaxing my face to shed the sharpness of battle from my posture. Cassie hung back by the door, her usual manic energy gone quiet. For some reason she was letting me handle the first meeting.

I wasn’t the greatest with kids, but something deep within my core blanched at the thought of not pulling this little girl into my arms. To Protect her, even if it was from hopelessness and despair. So I girded my tongue in Force of Spirit and rolled with it.

“Eri,” I said softly.

She froze.

Just like that, everything about her stilled. The trembling. The sobbing. She didn’t look up - not yet - but I could feel the way her entire body locked up, muscles pulled tight with expectation. Anticipation. Dread. Shyish had been as thick in the labyrinth as it had been in Coil’s base back on Bet, but in this artificially cheery bedroom, it was almost enough to fucking choke on.

It tasted like ash and rot.

“Hey, it’s okay now. You’re safe. We’re not with Overhaul. We’re heroes, and we came here to take you away from this place.” I stepped closer and crouched near the small bed, making sure to keep my voice soft and warm. “I’m Jason, and the girl back there is Cassie.” 

Her head moved a fraction. Just enough for one crimson eye to peek out from behind her arms.

And the way she looked at me - like she wanted to believe, but also like she couldn’t believe - hurt more than any wound I’d ever taken in a fight.

“Is this… Is this another trick?” She whispered, voice hoarse and tiny from disuse. “Did he send you? I won’t run away again. I promise! So please… I’ll be good. Please don’t hurt me…”

Behind me, I heard Cassie whimper. 

It took considerable effort to keep my face warm and inviting.

Instead, I swallowed down my anger and shook my head. “No, Eri. This isn’t some sort of trick, or a test, or anything like that. We’re here to bring you to a place where you can be free and taken care of. Protected. I know it’s hard for you to trust me right now, considerin’ everything you’ve been through, but I promise you… We are here to save you.”

…

For a long moment, she didn’t move. I was distantly aware of the danger of just sitting here, especially with the blast door wide fucking open, but I didn’t want to rush her and terrify the poor girl even more. 

So I waited.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, Eri uncurled. Not fully, but her knees lowered a couple inches away from her face. Her arms loosened from around her knees. The dam around her tears cracked a little more, and when she blinked, fresh ones slid silently down her cheeks.

“Is it… really over? C-Can I go home now?” she whispered brokenly.

I didn’t answer with words.

Instead, I opened my arms.

And after a moment’s hesitation, she launched herself into them like a missile. There was no grace. No caution. Just raw, desperate need for reassurance and protection - two things that I could, and would, grant her with every fiber of my fucking being. I caught the malnourished little girl and held her in my arms, feeling the way her tiny form trembled like a leaf in the wind. Her hands clutched at my mantle like it was her one and only lifeline, and I held her even tighter against my chest. Heat bled away from my shield of Aqshy, tempering the Wind until there was only a gentle, comfortable warmth, and most of the trembling ceased.

“Thank you, thank you, thankyouthankyouthankyou-...”

My eyes burned, but I blinked away what may have been a tear and stood back up to my full height. 

Cassie stood at the doorway, a hand pressed over her mouth, visor flickering with erratic light. I didn’t actually need any crazy draconic vision to spot the tears glistening in her eyes beneath her MagiLink’s pink and blue glow, but I said nothing. 

Neither did she. Not until we’d exited the room, and she flicked some sort of virtual switch to shut the massive door behind us.

“Is she…?”

“She’s asleep,” I murmured, answering the unspoken question.

Cassie looked at the girl in my arms, her tear-stained expression softening beneath the sharp lines of her visor. 

Eri’s small form was tucked into my chest, barely stirring, tiny fingers curled loosely against the folds of my mantle. Her breathing was slow and even, but she looked… fragile. Too fragile. The kind of fragile that spoke of more than just physical vulnerability. This wasn’t the fragility of bone or skin; this was a fragility of the fucking soul. She was one of those rare children who had survived horrors no child ever should, and instead of shattering like ‘normal’, she had instead condensed inward, folding her pain into some horrible, silent gravity well inside herself.

“Hold her, please.” I said, gently transferring Eri into her arms.The hacker moved automatically, all hesitance gone the moment she felt the warmth and fragility of the child against her chest. Her visor shimmered faintly, reflecting the fluorescence above as she looked down at Eri with an expression that flickered somewhere between awe and fury. I laid a hand on Cassie’s shoulder and whispered, “Take No Heed.”

“Why-”

Shadow-tinged masses of Ulgu gathered like fog, invisible to all but me, and the Gray Wind wrapped around Cassie and Eri in a mist of concealment. It tried instinctively to divert my attention away from them, but Immutable Form made the attempt useless.

“I want you to get her out of here,” I sighed, my voice low and cool. “Head back up the way we came, and take her somewhere quiet and safe. Like a library, or an ice cream parlor. It shouldn’t take me any longer than twenty minutes to finish up here. Just shoot me a text when you’re safe.”

Cassie opened her mouth to protest. I saw it in the narrowing of her eyes, the flex of her jaw, the way her boot scraped the floor slightly as she adjusted her stance.

“Don’t,” I said softly. Not unkind. Just final.

She paused. Then exhaled, long and slow. Her mouth tightened into a hard line before she gave a shallow nod, the logic of my command cutting through emotions like a shark through water. She was the best choice to carry Eri out. She could hack open any gate between here and the sky. She was well-versed in Illusion magic, and could avoid danger with a flick of her wrist and a small expenditure of mana from her gloves. And, more than anything, she knew I wouldn’t stop until every last bastard down here was ash in my Inventory, and having her and Eri here would simply get in the way..

Cassie’s voice was rough with unspoken emotions when she finally muttered, “Fine. But if you can - bring Overhaul’s body.”

I tilted my head slightly. “Planning to mount it on the wall?”

“No,” she said, her tone dry but not joking. “Quirk are genetic, right? … Right, you probably don’t know. But they’re physical, embedded in the body and the DNA, no magic or supernatural BS involved. If Amy gets her hands on his body, she might be able to dissect it and isolate his Quirk Factor itself. I’m talking about full-on matter reconstruction, Jay. Taking apart anything down to its base components and putting it back together however she wants. Imagine her being able to do that.”

My brows lifted.

“I’m not saying she’d even want to…” Cassie glanced down at Eri, her voice lowering to a whisper again. “But if she can, Amy could fix anything without worrying about redistributing bodily mass, or her powers not working on non-living material, or her needing to incubate in some plant sac to change herself. Plus she said she wanted something interesting brought back as a souvenir, and, well… Overhaul fucking deserves a taste of his own medicine, the sack of shit.”

It made sense, and I was certainly not against Amy growing more powerful - especially with the rest of the infinitely scary multiverse resting at the tips of our fingers. Besides, the fate I had in mind for Kai Chisaki wouldn’t have killed him in the first place.

That was going to come later.

“I’ll bring him back in one piece.”

Cassie offered a small, humorless smile. “He doesn’t have to be.”

… Gods, I loved that girl.

With one final glance between us, she adjusted her grip on Eri, tucked the girl’s head gently under her chin, and turned back the way we’d come. Her boots made no sound as they stepped into the tunnel behind us, swallowed by layers of illusion and shadow, and within moments she vanished like smoke on the wind.

I waited until I could no longer smell the scent of strawberries before I cast Clairvoyance, m.

The novice Illusion spell bloomed outward from my clenched left fist with a glow that could barely be contained. A single thread of ghostly blue mana snaked from between my fingers and into the air, its soft light pale beneath the bright white glare of the corridor. I felt the magic tug me forward by my gut, down a separate tunnel opposite the one Cassie had taken back up to the surface. But unlike the last time I utilized the spell, this casting came with a flash of color and motion. A vision.

Overhaul.

And he wasn’t alone.

I saw the scene for only a moment; the brown-haired ‘head’ of the Shie Hassaikai, walking down a corridor alongside another man - this one shorter, slim, wearing a black cloak, bowler hat, and the same sort of plague doctor mask that his boss wore. They were murmuring to each other, Overhaul with a clipboard in his hand, and the underling palming a plain, gunmetal gray pistol beneath the hem of his cloak. Their voices were murky and echoey, as if I was hearing it from beneath the surface of a lake, but my sensitive hearing picked up certain keywords.

Eri. Experimenting. Blood.

They were coming to collect her for more torture.

… It took slightly more effort than before to keep my anger in check.

My footfalls were silent against smooth concrete as I stalked forward, following the whisper of my magic as it led me towards my prey. I didn’t bother summoning my spear this time - I wouldn’t need it. Not for what I was about to do. Instead, I flexed the knuckles of my fingers, feeling my razor-sharp claws slip free of their nail bed. Now that I was aware of what was heading my way, I could distantly hear the echoes of footsteps nearby, drawing closer with each second. Two sets. One heavier than the other.

I moved faster. Magic took hold of my body, raising my boots mere centimeters above the floor, and wind swiftly began to whistle by my ears.

I was on them in moments, just as they were beginning to turn a corner.

Overhaul’s eyes widened a second too late, his short brown hair still fluttering backwards from the speed behind my sudden arrival. I watched the flicker of dawning comprehension bloom in his expression in a pale, ugly melting pot of disbelief, recognition, and fear that lasted no more than a heartbeat.

Because that was when I struck.

I went for the shorter guy first.

The tips of my claws punched through the side of his neck with a wet, meaty crunch. Cartilage and tendons snapped beneath the impact, blood spraying in a thick arterial arc as I tore clean through the base of his skull and out the other side. He didn’t scream. He couldn’t, because his throat was no longer intact enough to produce sound. He gagged once - a pitiful, choked thing - and collapsed to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. 

I didn’t watch him fall. I was already moving.

“Who-”

I didn’t let Overhaul get even a single word out. My boot, glowing blue and silver with reinforced mana, drew back and slammed into his chest with enough force to make the entire corridor quake. His entire rib cage crumpled beneath the blow. I felt them go, like chicken bones crunched between teeth, and then he was airborne, hurtling back down the hall with all the nonexistent grace of a wacky, arm-flailing inflatable tubeman. He hit the end of the concrete wall with an ear-splitting CRACK, broke straight through it, and vanished in an explosion of dust and rebar as the rest of the wall collapsed and gave way beneath the violence of his passage.

I followed him in at a brisk, controlled walk. 

“Y-You-,” he coughed through his hooked mask, his battered body hunched down against a metal shelf, “You’re not local. Who-”

Warning bells.

But I’d already been waiting for it.

Several spikes of razor-sharp concrete shot toward me, jagged and fast. I teleported forward before they could strike me, leaving the spikes to crash against one another in several loud cracks of concrete splintering concrete. Hysh suffused my body as I stepped out of thin-air, my eyes glowing and lidded, words spilling from between my lips at an octave that no one could hear except for me. Using this spell to finish him off had been a decision I made when I first heard about the atrocities committed against Eri. 

In a way, it was poetic justice.

He lowered his other hand to the ground.

Too late.

I was faster.

I reached forward with my right arm, Hysh bright against my skin like rays of sunfire, and my hand bloomed into golden light. A luminous, celestial mace formed from the radiant magic, its head shaped like the very sun itself, and something in my soul cowered. It was holy and bright and purifying in its glow, but the reality of its power was nothing to celebrate or revere.

The Mace of Years. Quite possibly the cruelest spell I knew.

The moment the mace fully took shape, it moved. Not under my direction - but by the will of the White Winds themselves..

The first strike landed against Overhaul’s hand before he could even blink at the lightshow.

And the supervillain shrieked.

Not from pain. Not immediately. It wasn’t pain that made men scream and break and come undone beneath this spell. No, it was time - all of it, all at once. It was every second of life and death compressed into long, infinite moments where the thought of eternal life was just as horrifying and mind-breaking as the thought of eternal death. The mace struck again, and again, and again; blows that didn’t carry true force, but held so much fucking weight in the metaphysical sense. Age, decay, renewal. I watched impassively as his body buckled beneath it, skin withering, hair falling out in brittle patches as age poured into him like water in a cracked glass-

And then it reversed.

He collapsed, still screaming, onto the floor. His flesh melted inward, organs twisting, regressing, his form shrinking as years ran backward through him. Muscle unraveled. Bones creaked and softened. In seconds, Overhaul was a boy. Then an infant.

Then a corpse.

And then…

He drew breath again.

An infant once more, wide-eyed and horrified, skin pink with youth as he was reborn. His mouth opened to plead and scream, and the curse took over again. He aged. His teeth blackened. His flesh sagged. His spine bent. His body cracked as arthritis riddled his bones like bullets.

Then he died again.

And the process repeated.

Over and over. Again and again.

Every time he died, I felt the spell reset - Hysh’s cruel finality reasserting itself with a magical, almost divine indifference. I didn’t need to maintain it. That was the spell’s curse. The light would continue its work until dawn, when we had him safely sealed away in the Palace, bound and ready to get his Quirk Factor ripped out by the resident Green Witch.

Unless, of course, someone with the right spell cared to stop it.

But I didn’t. 

Overhaul was a big boy. If Eri could handle it for years, I was certain he could handle it for a little over a day. Or maybe not, and he came out a drooling, mentally dead eighty year old. Either way, that burning vengeance in my blood was satisfied. I didn’t draw pleasure from the torture because I simply wasn’t sadistic enough to do so, but I definitely wasn’t a good enough person to not desire an eye for an eye ending for someone so shitty.

‘That’s just my sin to bear, I guess.’

I turned away from the twitching mass of decay and youth and decay again. His cries were already becoming gurgles, his mind fraying at the edges. It wouldn’t take long before madness and insanity claimed whatever remained of his soul, but I had more important things to do than listen to the pitiful screams of a man who disassembled a child over and over and over again like she was a flesh toy made of spare parts. I’d collect his body and shove it in my Sapphire Arch before I left.

For now…

Footsteps, Hidden Intuition murmured excitedly, Footsteps are approaching rapidly. Several footsteps. Dozens of footsteps. Yakuza reinforcements. Yakuza reinforcements heard the battle. Yakuza reinforcements are coming to investigate. Yakuza reinforcements-

‘Are gonna die.’

They sure as hell made my clean-up job easier.

“Right then,” I cracked my neck to the side with a groan, and summoned my spear in a flash of magic. “Guess my body count’s gonna get bloated regardless. Whatever. ‘Least it’s for a good cause.”

I sat down outside of the storage room where Overhaul was having his early, mid, and late life crisis… And waited.

It only took a few seconds for the first squad of reinforcements to arrive, alongside a huge, hulking man in a familiar mask. Another one of the Lieutenants.

And, of course, I gave them an extremely warm welcome.

Aqshy was more than happy to oblige.

_________________________________________

Perk Accepted:

Dragon (DxD Universe) - Major Might Perk

Though you may start as a young and inexperienced Dragon, your raw power is already massive as the strongest race to exist in the supernatural world. Your mana is also very easy to manipulate, though it may not come to you as easily as a Devil. With the choice of this perk, you must pick an element, and this element will be much easier for you to control. You do have a big weakness to Dragon Slaying equipment, which can put you down fairly easily. However, these effects will get weaker as you grow stronger as a dragon.

A/N: 13k words!

Sorry for the wait guys, I struggled a bit with this chapter, and work has been kicking my ass. I promised I’d get it out to you Saturday, but it took another day in the oven for me to get it to a satisfactory conclusion. And even then, I had to cut stuff out because the OG plan was to fit in the All Might fight here too. That… just couldn’t happen.

So we have this.

For those who feel as if the Chisaki fight was anticlimactic, I’m sorry you feel that way. I thought about having an epic battle, but Jason was on demon timing, and he was NOT giving Overhaul of all people the honor of running fair ones. He ambushed them, dismantled them with superior strength and speed, and capitalized on Overhaul’s relative lack of physical superiority. 

And if you think the Mace of Years was too brutal… Homie, Overhaul spent a very long time literally pulling Eri apart and putting her back together. And she felt the pain of it every. Time. There’s literal vats in the lab where they stored the offal from using her body so much. VATS. If you asked me, Overhaul deserved a LOT more.

As for the perk…

Yeah. That’s just how the rolls went, and as I am but a slave to the Grimoire (unless it throws something truly outrageous at me), I rolled (haha) with it. Guess we’ll see the after-effects of Jason becoming a literal magic dragon, and everything it grants him, eventually. He also resisted the full transformation, so you have that to look forward to as well! For those wondering, he will have slight personality shifts due to the perk, but nothing that he already wasn’t. For instance, he’ll probably end up being more horny in general, more possessive, more greedy for treasure and magical artifacts… But he was already all of those things. Being a dragon just amplifies it a bit.

Guess I’ll have to add DxD to the world-hop list at some point. :>