“Hi Derek!” Happy said, a god damn smile on his face. Always smiling. Always happy.
I was going to rip it apart. His singing and music playing were dangerous so I’d simply not give any time to do anything. He had to die. The safety of more than just me relied on it.
I could see him now, right in front of me, wide open. I slashed with my claws and…
He dodged. He barely moved, but he dodged. My other claw came barreling upwards as my tail shot forward. He moved barely less than an inch and yet somehow both my attacks missed. My eyes widened and I slashed faster.
My tail was aiming for his head, too fast to dodge and-!
I tripped. I had taken a step forward and tripped on the ground. I quickly caught myself but it was too late. Happy stepped past my tail stabbing forward and reached out for me. He grabbed my arms and-
My brain nearly shut down as I realized what was going on. Happy had grabbed both my wrists and took a few steps dragging me along. Was…. was he fucking doing the Tango with me?
“Come on Derek, dance with me!”
“Go to hell!”
My tail snapped, whipping through the air. It was too easily forgotten that my tail wasn’t a spear. It was a chain blade. As it elongated and snapped for his neck, I tried and shockingly easily overpowered him. He was about to be eviscerated when-
A sudden cramp in my leg had me bending down to the right, Happy pulled along with. My tail blade when sailing over both our heads as it looked like I had ‘dipped’ Happy.
What the fuck was this?
“The Waltz!” Happy said, smile never having left his face.
I threw him down to the ground, ready to stomp his head in, when a falling fucking leaf got in the way of my foot, giving him time to get back to his feet.
This wasn’t right.
Konohora dived for him, a complete sneak attack when he least expected it.
She missed. It looked like she has missed on purpose. She stared at her fist in confusion.
I stopped. Something was going on and I was liking it less and less.
“How… what are you doing?”
“Hmm? Oh whatever could you mean beautiful? I’m just having a fun dance!”
I could feel a vein on my head throbbing. He hadn’t attacked or sang or used an instrument, despite having more than enough time to. He really was treating this like a dance between us. And worse than that… there was no way all those things just happened. There were only two options and both were fairly horrifying.
The first was illusions somehow. That just like when we were in the village and I had been in that weird space with him, a similar thing was happening now. But… my power gauge had still roughly told me where I was. I still felt like I was in the same space, I still felt like Konohora and Happy were actually here, actually moving.
But the second option… was far worse. I felt horror creep over me as I remembered Happy’s last name.
Lucky.
“You… you’re using probability manipulation.”
Happy cocked his head to the side and began to shake it a bit.
“I’m just Lucky! Happy Go Lucky, at your service!”
“...That is one of the worst names I’ve ever heard…” Konohora mumbled nearby.
That was the first time I saw a slightly pinched expression on Happy’s face but his smile never left.
My thoughts were racing as my power gauge finally felt like it had something to latch onto. Luck. Part of that unfathomable nature of Happy had been luck. …Was it even on purpose? It didn’t look like Happy was doing anything. If it was entirely passive then… that was really really bad. How the fuck do you fight someone innately Lucky? I had tripped, cramped up, and had a giant leaf randomly fall in front of me. What were the actual effects that needed to happen to cause that? The ground either needed to be slick or my footing not great, my own body needed to have muscles uncontrollably contract, and the point between leaf and stick would have needed to suddenly weaken and weaken at the exact time and fall in the exact way to end up in front of me.
His Lucky power had physicalized effects. Tangible things had to change to give the appearance of intangible results. That was horrifying. How far would that go? If I was really about to actually kill Happy… would I suddenly have a brain aneurysm? Would a random Giantess leave five minutes beforehand to stop me? What were the limits? When did it end?
I stayed still as my power went ballistic. Luck. We had already charted out ‘damage, weakness, and danger’, but this felt on a whole other level. No, that didn’t give the concept justice. It was like I was a two year old that had just realized addition and subtraction existed and I was being shown that there was a new field of Super Quantum Physics, that redefined all of reality itself.
It was so intense that I felt-
Uh-oh.
****
Konohora was in disbelief. She had missed. That wasn’t what had shocked her. As a Healer, she had an innate awareness of her body at all points in time. She had felt her body move in a way it wasn’t supposed to. In a way she hadn’t told it to. She had immediately sent healing injuries towards the area and gotten control of herself, but it had made her miss her punch completely.
She turned around, listening to the conversation at hand. Her frown deepened. She had long suspected that Derek’s ‘power gauge’ was actually an Ability. Strong people could tell the difference in strength between them and others, yes, but it seemed to go above and beyond that. Beyond what even just a fine tuned sense could tell you.
Probability manipulation… that would be a hard ability to beat. She was getting ready to attack… when Derek collapsed face first to the ground.
“Derek!”
She ran, ignoring Happy. She put a hand on him… only to feel that his brain seemed to heating up to the point of liquifying. She couldn’t heal that in the best of cases. Maybe not even with a miracle.
“Huh.” Happy said.
Konohora had a rare moment of losing her composure.
“What are you doing?! Stop!”
“Don’t worry! I don’t want Derek to die, so it should all be fine.” The smiling madman said.
Konohora sent all the healing energies she could into Derek but… it wasn’t going to be nearly enough. Time began to creep forward with Happy whistling. As if Derek wasn’t dying right now. She finally snapped as her healing energies began to dwindle.
“Would you do somethi-” Her yell died in her throat, as a shadow passed over her.
****
I blinked, the sun shining in my eyes. I sighed. Great. Let’s see, third time I’ve nearly died in less than a month. Fourth? I’m losing count.
“Derek!” Konohora was there, hanging above me. I could feel her healing energies going through me.
“Thanks for the save Konohora. I was pretty sure I was going to die there.”
Her face became deadpan.
“...I didn’t save you.”
“Huh?”
“A… bird… dropped an A-Grade healing potion on you.”
I looked at her. She looked at me. Her face was deathly serious.
I finally just let out a sigh.
“Fucking probability manipulation.”
“Derek! I’m so glad you’re alive and well. No idea why you almost weren’t! Just bad luck?” There was a teasing sound at the end there. Konohora turned around, anger in her eyes, but it surprisingly almost wasn’t Happy’s fault. At least not directly. My power had tried to use brute force to unravel his unfathomable nature. And failed. Failed really bad. Failed so bad that it began to harm me.
And that was when all hell broke loose. Because suddenly, my power gauge itself was something with power, something able to be measured. If Lucky was like looking at something unfathomable… I had no idea what looking at my own power was like. I got a glimpse and then felt my consciousness leaving me.
Even now, I couldn’t really feel it, just remember it. I was starting to figure out that whatever the hell I had, was probably not something everyone had. The brief glimpse I had into my power gauge all but confirmed that. I felt like a million years worth of knowledge was trying to shove itself in my brain and failed, completely.
I sat back up and looked at Happy.
Fucking Happy.
Killing him was going to be… exhausting. How did you beat a man like that?
“So!” He said. “How about we go find that Gem?”
“Counter offer,” I said. “You can go fuck off and die.”
Happy pouted.
“Aww. Come on! What did I ever do to you beautiful?”
“Killed random innocent people and summoned me and my teammates to random locations somewhere in the world.”
At least I was pretty sure at this point Riary and Tyler hadn’t arrived in this god forsaken jungle.
“But adventures are fun! Besides, you don’t know that those people were innocent.”
I blinked. Huh.
“Were they?”
“Who knows!” Happy smiled, as if his answer was funny.
“You fucking sociopath. Beyond the cult and the innocent people dead, why on earth do you think we’d let you get your hands on the Gems?”
He cupped his chin and thought about it for a minute.
“It’d be fun?”
“...I want to kill him.” Konohora said, face deadpan.
“Aww come on guys! I can even play us some music to lighten the journey. It’s going to be a doozy after all!”
He, out of fucking nowhere, pulled a set of bongos. He began to put them around his neck.
“No music!” I was quick to shout.
He paused and this time, for the first time, I saw a real frown appear on his face. And then it was gone just as quickly as it had arrived. In fact, he seemed even happier now.
“Interesting! Alright. So, let’s start heading to the temple.”
I sighed. Of course.
“You already know where the Gem is.”
“Yup!”
“And you just want to bring us with you because otherwise it’d be boring.”
“Hmmmm… nope! It’s just more interesting and fun this way. Not to mention that it’s always nice to spend time with you Derek. You’re so great!”
My skin crawled a little as he said that. Not because I didn’t like it. But because my entire body felt enamored with joy. He still had that absolutely unnatural charisma to him. The longer I talked to him, the more I liked him. The more I saw him, the more I wanted him. Truthfully, I didn’t know those random innocent people and had no history to place cults in with. They just… weren’t enough to sway me. Even the very good reasons I did have started to seem more and more shallow. It was like he was a fire and I was a being made of ice. No, it was like everything was ice to his charming fire. Maybe more like moths to a flame then. You… just… couldn’t help but be pulled in towards him.
He was the bane of anything with a mind.
The worst part was… I don’t even think it’s on purpose. Hell, I don’t even fully think it was his Lucky powers. My power couldn’t understand charisma but it was distinct. At least in Lucky. It was like he had maxed out the stat itself.
Christ, a bard with mystical power and a maxed out luck and charisma stat.
That was part of the reason I wanted to stay the hell away from him. Spending more than five minutes with the man and I’d be ready to forgive him, fuck him, and give him the clothes off my back. Fuck.
“Will the Gem get us back? Away from this Jungle at least?” I finally asked.
“Hmmm. Maybe!” Happy said with a nod.
Konohora looked at me. I sighed.
“We tried killing him. That went poorly. Let’s just go get the damn Gem, get home, and murder him afterwards.”
“That’s the spirit! Minus the whole murder thing but it will be interesting to see you try! Oh! What if you actually succeed?! That’d be amazing!”
I started to smile at Happy’s antics, only to bite my tongue.
No. I couldn’t forget the reason he needed to die. I got up, getting ready to travel with this monster, replaying the scene back to myself.
****
I could see and sense the others nearby, looking at them all. Eight Gems, eight domains. The Gem I had struck took its rightful place among the eight.
But there was something…. Wrong.
I was pulled, pulled further into a space. Higher, separate, different. A shining light came out of me and I looked down in horror.
The Hell Gem.
It was glowing inside my chest. Spinning. I looked up and my eyes shook. Happy was there. His smile was bright and pure, his eyes staring directly at me. And spinning inside his chest… was a gem.
A Gem of pure Nothing.
I couldn’t understand and my mind began to shake looking at it. I looked across from me… and more than just my mind shook. There was another Gem. I knew it. I could feel it. I knew exactly what this Gem was with one glance.
If I carried the Hell Gem…. this was the Heaven Gem.
I looked across from Happy and-
Everything. Where Happy carried Nothing, his opposite was Everything.
I looked away, the soul barrier in my mind beginning to shake. I looked down and realized the horrible truth. Eight Gems. Eight Domains.
But four more.
Four Gems. Four Planes. Four Base Realities.
If all of these places… led to places just like Hell then…
Happy opened his mouth and laughed, cracks beginning to show all around on this strange space.
“Interesting!”
With that word I felt myself falling towards Konohora as space broke.
****
This motherfucker…
He carried a Gem just like mine.
“Hi Derek!” Happy said, a god damn smile on his face. Always smiling. Always happy.
I was going to rip it apart. His singing and music playing were dangerous so I’d simply not give any time to do anything. He had to die. The safety of more than just me relied on it.
I could see him now, right in front of me, wide open. I slashed with my claws and…
He dodged. He barely moved, but he dodged. My other claw came barreling upwards as my tail shot forward. He moved barely less than an inch and yet somehow both my attacks missed. My eyes widened and I slashed faster.
My tail was aiming for his head, too fast to dodge and-!
I tripped. I had taken a step forward and tripped on the ground. I quickly caught myself but it was too late. Happy stepped past my tail stabbing forward and reached out for me. He grabbed my arms and-
My brain nearly shut down as I realized what was going on. Happy had grabbed both my wrists and took a few steps dragging me along. Was…. was he fucking doing the Tango with me?
“Come on Derek, dance with me!”
“Go to hell!”
My tail snapped, whipping through the air. It was too easily forgotten that my tail wasn’t a spear. It was a chain blade. As it elongated and snapped for his neck, I tried and shockingly easily overpowered him. He was about to be eviscerated when-
A sudden cramp in my leg had me bending down to the right, Happy pulled along with. My tail blade when sailing over both our heads as it looked like I had ‘dipped’ Happy.
What the fuck was this?
“The Waltz!” Happy said, smile never having left his face.
I threw him down to the ground, ready to stomp his head in, when a falling fucking leaf got in the way of my foot, giving him time to get back to his feet.
This wasn’t right.
Konohora dived for him, a complete sneak attack when he least expected it.
She missed. It looked like she has missed on purpose. She stared at her fist in confusion.
I stopped. Something was going on and I was liking it less and less.
“How… what are you doing?”
“Hmm? Oh whatever could you mean beautiful? I’m just having a fun dance!”
I could feel a vein on my head throbbing. He hadn’t attacked or sang or used an instrument, despite having more than enough time to. He really was treating this like a dance between us. And worse than that… there was no way all those things just happened. There were only two options and both were fairly horrifying.
The first was illusions somehow. That just like when we were in the village and I had been in that weird space with him, a similar thing was happening now. But… my power gauge had still roughly told me where I was. I still felt like I was in the same space, I still felt like Konohora and Happy were actually here, actually moving.
But the second option… was far worse. I felt horror creep over me as I remembered Happy’s last name.
Lucky.
“You… you’re using probability manipulation.”
Happy cocked his head to the side and began to shake it a bit.
“I’m just Lucky! Happy Go Lucky, at your service!”
“...That is one of the worst names I’ve ever heard…” Konohora mumbled nearby.
That was the first time I saw a slightly pinched expression on Happy’s face but his smile never left.
My thoughts were racing as my power gauge finally felt like it had something to latch onto. Luck. Part of that unfathomable nature of Happy had been luck. …Was it even on purpose? It didn’t look like Happy was doing anything. If it was entirely passive then… that was really really bad. How the fuck do you fight someone innately Lucky? I had tripped, cramped up, and had a giant leaf randomly fall in front of me. What were the actual effects that needed to happen to cause that? The ground either needed to be slick or my footing not great, my own body needed to have muscles uncontrollably contract, and the point between leaf and stick would have needed to suddenly weaken and weaken at the exact time and fall in the exact way to end up in front of me.
His Lucky power had physicalized effects. Tangible things had to change to give the appearance of intangible results. That was horrifying. How far would that go? If I was really about to actually kill Happy… would I suddenly have a brain aneurysm? Would a random Giantess leave five minutes beforehand to stop me? What were the limits? When did it end?
I stayed still as my power went ballistic. Luck. We had already charted out ‘damage, weakness, and danger’, but this felt on a whole other level. No, that didn’t give the concept justice. It was like I was a two year old that had just realized addition and subtraction existed and I was being shown that there was a new field of Super Quantum Physics, that redefined all of reality itself.
It was so intense that I felt-
Uh-oh.
****
Konohora was in disbelief. She had missed. That wasn’t what had shocked her. As a Healer, she had an innate awareness of her body at all points in time. She had felt her body move in a way it wasn’t supposed to. In a way she hadn’t told it to. She had immediately sent healing injuries towards the area and gotten control of herself, but it had made her miss her punch completely.
She turned around, listening to the conversation at hand. Her frown deepened. She had long suspected that Derek’s ‘power gauge’ was actually an Ability. Strong people could tell the difference in strength between them and others, yes, but it seemed to go above and beyond that. Beyond what even just a fine tuned sense could tell you.
Probability manipulation… that would be a hard ability to beat. She was getting ready to attack… when Derek collapsed face first to the ground.
“Derek!”
She ran, ignoring Happy. She put a hand on him… only to feel that his brain seemed to heating up to the point of liquifying. She couldn’t heal that in the best of cases. Maybe not even with a miracle.
“Huh.” Happy said.
Konohora had a rare moment of losing her composure.
“What are you doing?! Stop!”
“Don’t worry! I don’t want Derek to die, so it should all be fine.” The smiling madman said.
Konohora sent all the healing energies she could into Derek but… it wasn’t going to be nearly enough. Time began to creep forward with Happy whistling. As if Derek wasn’t dying right now. She finally snapped as her healing energies began to dwindle.
“Would you do somethi-” Her yell died in her throat, as a shadow passed over her.
****
I blinked, the sun shining in my eyes. I sighed. Great. Let’s see, third time I’ve nearly died in less than a month. Fourth? I’m losing count.
“Derek!” Konohora was there, hanging above me. I could feel her healing energies going through me.
“Thanks for the save Konohora. I was pretty sure I was going to die there.”
Her face became deadpan.
“...I didn’t save you.”
“Huh?”
“A… bird… dropped an A-Grade healing potion on you.”
I looked at her. She looked at me. Her face was deathly serious.
I finally just let out a sigh.
“Fucking probability manipulation.”
“Derek! I’m so glad you’re alive and well. No idea why you almost weren’t! Just bad luck?” There was a teasing sound at the end there. Konohora turned around, anger in her eyes, but it surprisingly almost wasn’t Happy’s fault. At least not directly. My power had tried to use brute force to unravel his unfathomable nature. And failed. Failed really bad. Failed so bad that it began to harm me.
And that was when all hell broke loose. Because suddenly, my power gauge itself was something with power, something able to be measured. If Lucky was like looking at something unfathomable… I had no idea what looking at my own power was like. I got a glimpse and then felt my consciousness leaving me.
Even now, I couldn’t really feel it, just remember it. I was starting to figure out that whatever the hell I had, was probably not something everyone had. The brief glimpse I had into my power gauge all but confirmed that. I felt like a million years worth of knowledge was trying to shove itself in my brain and failed, completely.
I sat back up and looked at Happy.
Fucking Happy.
Killing him was going to be… exhausting. How did you beat a man like that?
“So!” He said. “How about we go find that Gem?”
“Counter offer,” I said. “You can go fuck off and die.”
Happy pouted.
“Aww. Come on! What did I ever do to you beautiful?”
“Killed random innocent people and summoned me and my teammates to random locations somewhere in the world.”
At least I was pretty sure at this point Riary and Tyler hadn’t arrived in this god forsaken jungle.
“But adventures are fun! Besides, you don’t know that those people were innocent.”
I blinked. Huh.
“Were they?”
“Who knows!” Happy smiled, as if his answer was funny.
“You fucking sociopath. Beyond the cult and the innocent people dead, why on earth do you think we’d let you get your hands on the Gems?”
He cupped his chin and thought about it for a minute.
“It’d be fun?”
“...I want to kill him.” Konohora said, face deadpan.
“Aww come on guys! I can even play us some music to lighten the journey. It’s going to be a doozy after all!”
He, out of fucking nowhere, pulled a set of bongos. He began to put them around his neck.
“No music!” I was quick to shout.
He paused and this time, for the first time, I saw a real frown appear on his face. And then it was gone just as quickly as it had arrived. In fact, he seemed even happier now.
“Interesting! Alright. So, let’s start heading to the temple.”
I sighed. Of course.
“You already know where the Gem is.”
“Yup!”
“And you just want to bring us with you because otherwise it’d be boring.”
“Hmmmm… nope! It’s just more interesting and fun this way. Not to mention that it’s always nice to spend time with you Derek. You’re so great!”
My skin crawled a little as he said that. Not because I didn’t like it. But because my entire body felt enamored with joy. He still had that absolutely unnatural charisma to him. The longer I talked to him, the more I liked him. The more I saw him, the more I wanted him. Truthfully, I didn’t know those random innocent people and had no history to place cults in with. They just… weren’t enough to sway me. Even the very good reasons I did have started to seem more and more shallow. It was like he was a fire and I was a being made of ice. No, it was like everything was ice to his charming fire. Maybe more like moths to a flame then. You… just… couldn’t help but be pulled in towards him.
He was the bane of anything with a mind.
The worst part was… I don’t even think it’s on purpose. Hell, I don’t even fully think it was his Lucky powers. My power couldn’t understand charisma but it was distinct. At least in Lucky. It was like he had maxed out the stat itself.
Christ, a bard with mystical power and a maxed out luck and charisma stat.
That was part of the reason I wanted to stay the hell away from him. Spending more than five minutes with the man and I’d be ready to forgive him, fuck him, and give him the clothes off my back. Fuck.
“Will the Gem get us back? Away from this Jungle at least?” I finally asked.
“Hmmm. Maybe!” Happy said with a nod.
Konohora looked at me. I sighed.
“We tried killing him. That went poorly. Let’s just go get the damn Gem, get home, and murder him afterwards.”
“That’s the spirit! Minus the whole murder thing but it will be interesting to see you try! Oh! What if you actually succeed?! That’d be amazing!”
I started to smile at Happy’s antics, only to bite my tongue.
No. I couldn’t forget the reason he needed to die. I got up, getting ready to travel with this monster, replaying the scene back to myself.
****
I could see and sense the others nearby, looking at them all. Eight Gems, eight domains. The Gem I had struck took its rightful place among the eight.
But there was something…. Wrong.
I was pulled, pulled further into a space. Higher, separate, different. A shining light came out of me and I looked down in horror.
The Hell Gem.
It was glowing inside my chest. Spinning. I looked up and my eyes shook. Happy was there. His smile was bright and pure, his eyes staring directly at me. And spinning inside his chest… was a gem.
A Gem of pure Nothing.
I couldn’t understand and my mind began to shake looking at it. I looked across from me… and more than just my mind shook. There was another Gem. I knew it. I could feel it. I knew exactly what this Gem was with one glance.
If I carried the Hell Gem…. this was the Heaven Gem.
I looked across from Happy and-
Everything. Where Happy carried Nothing, his opposite was Everything.
I looked away, the soul barrier in my mind beginning to shake. I looked down and realized the horrible truth. Eight Gems. Eight Domains.
But four more.
Four Gems. Four Planes. Four Base Realities.
If all of these places… led to places just like Hell then…
Happy opened his mouth and laughed, cracks beginning to show all around on this strange space.
“Interesting!”
With that word I felt myself falling towards Konohora as space broke.
****
This motherfucker…
He carried a Gem just like mine.
