On Earth, there's a myth about a small village that can be found deep inside a forest, surrounded by a clear lake and beautiful mountains. But, from the outsider points of view, it's just a forest that surrounded by a thick mist. The village was called Remy, aside from its beautiful landscape, this village held a deep secret.
I lived there once. There, lives were quite slow and simple compared to other places, when they're hungry they eat, when they're tired they sleep, and when they're bored they sing their favorite song away, and I quite liked those kinds of life, no worries, no responsibilities.— But sadly, I didn't stay there for long. Bound by my fate and duties, I was meant to roam across the universe.
I walked through countless planets no matter how big or small. Found new knowledge and improved my strength and the cycle repeats. I walked through numerous battlefields and interplanetary wars. Slaughter my ways through to continue my journey.
I was called many things throughout my journey, some would call me god, reaper, emperor, murderer, tyrants or overlords. But, there's one name among many names that I have got, that I would never dare to forget. And that would be....a sinner...
- Records from the man who conquered the multiverse.
----
1969 - Earth, Summer.
The grass was dancing, caressed by the gentle winds on top of a lonely cliff. The view was beautiful. A lake at the distance, two mountains crossed each other, and the sun was slowly rising from it. Not too far on the edge of a cliff, there was a grave with a simple tombstone. The tombstone was made of stone with a small hole that can fit a hand near the tombstone head. Below it, an epitaph can be read that says, 'here lies my beloved father.'
A Young man with a briefcase and a bouquet a flower can be seen in front of the grave. His hair was long and tied behind his back, he wears a black suit and a gray shirt inside it, along with a brown coat. His feature appears a bit more feminine but nevertheless can make a lady blush with just a smile. Sharp brows and blue eyes that looked like a jewel, but the striking feature were his hairclips on his side hair.
This young man was Arthur. Arthur Godfrey.
Arthur placed the flower bouquet in front of the grave, and said, "Dad...It's been one year since you gone to visit mom, and now it's already my sixteenth birthday." Taking a breath, Arthur continued, "I'm gonna be away for a while dad. I'm going to take my rite of passage, and explore the world. But, I know we got much more responsibilities in the future other than that."
"Wait for me dad, maybe I'll visit you and mom in heaven someday." Arthur smiled, and touch the tombstone one last time. As if giving him his blessings, a gust of wind passed through the tombstone. His hair flutters along with it as if it was dancing. He closed his eye to feel the gentle breeze caressed his body and his hands moved towards his face. He brushed his bangs to the side of his ear with his fingers, and suddenly paused when he touched the hairclips his father gave. A tinge of nostalgia flashed inside his memory. The warm memory of a loving father.
-
***
"Dad? Why am I using a hairclip? I'm a boy you know!"
"Hahaha, well there's no rule stating a boy can't use a hairclip is it?"
"Well...That's true! But still, it's for girls dad!!"
"You looked like a girl anyway so nobody will notice if you wear one! Hahaha!!"
"DAD!!!"
"Ouch!!! Okay! Okay! Don't bite me...OUCH!!!"
"Hmph...."
"Wuuu...Let me tell you the story behind those hairclips then."
"What is it????"
"Well it's nothing grand or anything, it's just your mom's memento after you were born."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"...."
"...."
****
-
Arthur laughed, but from his laugh, a certain sadness hidden inside it. From the corner of his eyes, droplets of tears were formed and blown away by the winds. He wiped away his remaining tears and said one last thing before he leaves,
"Dad, I'm gonna make you and mom proud!"
He turned away, with resolution glinted on his eyes. His steps were slow but firm, he walked into the forest road that leads to the village. A bright sunny day, but he felt like there was something not right, a fluctuation in the air. There was something that moved within the sky. In the cloudy skies, a big blue line appears one after another, intersecting, to make a diagram, a big formation of line.
Arthur looked at the sky and muttered to himself, "It's time huh."
----
At the depth of the forest, a shadow lurked and moved across the treetops. Arthur kept walking at the same pace, like nothing in the world can happen in this beautiful weather. When suddenly, he heard a whistle.
Woosh
Woosh
Woosh
His ears twitched. He closed his eyes and focused all of his senses towards his ears. He was trained to be sensitive towards his environment because on the battlefields, any misstep could easily costed his life.
'An arrow!' He thought and looked at the direction it's coming from. Gone now his nonchalant expression replaced with a serious one, he focused his mind and his body was ready.
Woosh
Arthur saw the first arrow flew straight from the formation of trees and aimed directly towards his head. He reacted fast and ducked at the last second. The arrow brushed past his head taking one or more strands of hair in its path.
Woosh
Woosh
Two more arrows flew towards him and aimed directly at his crouched position as if knowing that he would assume that position. Sparks of neurons were clashing and sparkled inside Arthur's brain, signifying his focused state. He rolled to the side and points his finger forwards making a gun sign after.
Strange occurrences, invisible energy started to gather making a scrambled drawing in the air in front of Arthur's fingers. These scrambled drawing at the first glance didn't look like anything because it flashed too fast, but if closely looked at, these drawing looks like a rune.
The energy that gathers at Arthur fingertips accumulated to become a drawing similar to ᚨ Rune. The rune then transformed into a condensed fireball the size of a baseball ball in front of Arthur's fingertips, and all of that sequence took approximately 33 seconds to complete. Arthur smiled and aimed the condensed fireball towards the arrows source.
He angled his fireball perfectly and said, "Explo..." Just about to spoke out the words he thought, 'No! No! No! It will get me sued!' He gave up the words and yelled instead, "WHATEVER! BOOM ASSHOLE!"
Whoosh!
The condensed fireball traveled through the forest with the speed of sound and produced a whizzing sound as it moved to its target. Arthur's hand were jerked backward due to the recoil, but to be honest, there was no recoil at all, he just thought it would make him looked cooler. But the irony is, no one was watching him doing that motion.
Arthur mind was connected to the fireball via the strange energy. He sensed the fireball was nearing to its target and decided to explode it away. He closed his eye to focus on the fireball path and muttered, "Now!"
----
He let out a sigh of relief and stood up from his crouched position, but he still felt something was not right. He trusted his guts and looked up, and saw a small shadow just under the sunlight. He was annoyed and thought, 'What now! Can my life be a little easier!' He nagged in his mind. The shadows were becoming bigger and bigger with each second. Finally, he saw the shadow figure and the big ax on its hand.
BOOM!
The neurons on his brain clashed again. Arthur dodged to the side with his hand covering his face, sweat was rolling on his cheek and at the same time said to himself, "I'm dead aren't I, when that big thing hits me."
Arthur finally saw clearly what the shadow looks like. It was a young woman with a pale complexion, but her face looks expressionless. The young woman wore a black dress similar to what Al*** wears in her story. She got a small and beautiful face with her long blond hair. But, that's not her striking features, it was the ears, long ears like the elves had.
Annoyed by Arthur dodge she clicked her tongue and said, "Could you not move?" While at the same time swung the big axe in her hands.
"If it's not for your personality, and that deadpan stare looks of yours, I think I'm falling in love with you since long time ago, isn't it. Thankfully I'm not falling in love with you even though you are a beautiful young lady. And you're an elf for god sake! You're not supposed to be this barbaric!"
She still kept the same deadpan looks on her face, while retorted, "Well thank you for the compliments! And you can fuck off! And stop moving already!"
"Now woman- if I'm stopping- I'm gonna be a meat paste- and that will do no good for me." Arthur replied.
Arthur kept moving around to dodge the ax while at the same time dividing the woman attention with his banter. His left hand moved unknowingly from the young woman eyes, gathering invisible energy to form another rune.
The young woman kept swinging the big ax on her hands like there was no weight in it and nearly hit Arthur. Arthur got a cold sweat rolled down on his back. He leaped one step and landed with his left hand. The young woman assumed that she got the upper hands. She proceeds to lift her ax and swung vertically towards Arthur's head, while Arthur's on the other hand already anticipated the motion and rolled to the side at the last second.
BOOM!
The young woman missed his attack towards Arthur and at the same time another rune with the symbol 𐌁 lit up from her feet. The rune flashed and disappear in just a matter of seconds resulted in trembling the grounds beneath her feet. Multiple roots shooted out from it and started to crawl, gripping tight into the young woman bodies and axe.
The young woman stared at Arthur with her deadpan looks and said, "You think this thing will stop me?"
Arthur just smiled at her remarks and slowly stood up on his feet, he smirked and said, "Well, at least I can run away while you're stuck in it."
Arthur turned his body around trying to run. But once more his guts feelings were telling him that there was in no way possible that this just ends like this. Just as he tried to look back, a punch was thrown from his side. By sheer reflex, he moved his right hand that was carrying the briefcase and supported it with his other hand to block the incoming attack.
Pushed back one step by the sheer strength of that punch, Arthur berated, "I knew it! No way would this ends just like this and thank god that my briefcase already strengthened by magic!"
Arthur saw that the punch was delivered by a young man, the same age as Arthur which is 16. he wears an uptight black suit, a blue tie with diamonds pattern on it, and a black shirt. The young man was quite tall compared to his peers at the same age, his hair was short and side parted with a single devil horn protruding on his left forehead. His skin was tanned, paired with a circle framed glasses to perfect his stoic and gentleman looks.
After the punch, Arthur heard another movement on top of the tree branches. Arthur started looking around and thought, 'bloody hell, just that barbaric elvish woman isn't enough already, I got a stoic devil with glasses here trying to punch me to death, AND! on top of that, a feline of a woman that didn't know when to give up! And now she's perched up on top of that tree just to smirk at me, I just hate her guts.'
Knowing that he was surrounded, Arthur got up and started to dust his clothes. He checked his surrounding once more and put up a smile. At the same time the trio that ambushed Arthur started to move, the young man charged up to throw another punch, the young elvish woman finally get rid of the roots that keeping her and charged as well with her big ax, and lastly, the female archer nocked her arrows into the bow and released it.
Surrounded, Arthur lifted up both of his hands and sweat rolled down on his cheeks. He smiled awkwardly and said, "I give up! you all win!".
As soon as the words were out of Arthur's lips, he felt his right cheeks grazed by the wind of the young man punches, while on his left side he felt a strong gust of wind from the swing of a big ax, and to top it all, his fine hair was cut by the tip of the female archer arrow.
Arthur felt his hair rose up from top to bottom. Anxious, he said in a cracked voice, "Well, that worked out didn't it."
The young devil man was the first to retract his fist, and said, "I'm sorry for my misdemeanor." And at the same time, he helped Arthur to fix his clothes and dusted off his coat.
Arthur still dazed, snapped back to reality and retorted, "Misdemeanor? Misdemeanor you said, Jack? I almost got killed there, not once, not twice, but thrice."
"Pardon my action earlier about that Arthur, all I can offer you is my heartfelt condolences." Jack said with a slight bow.
Bang!
The female archer leaped down from her tree, just to make a mistake and tripped to make a big fall. Stumbled and landed on her butt revealed a young female woman. Her hood fell down and showed her beautiful feature. She had a slight yellow complexion. Her face was round completed with ruby feline eyes. Her amber hair was short with the length just slightly below her jaws and bangs lined to the side. She wore a white dress with a brown hooded jacket and a headband around his head that in front of her big feline ear.
The young elvish woman saw the tumbled archer and walked towards her while dragging her big ax.
"You okay Annie?" the young elvish woman chimed with her typical unemotional voice.
"Y-Yeah, ehehe..." Embarrassed by her own act Annie blushed.
Annie then looked at the direction of Arthur, and said in her low voice, "S-So, you lost right A-Arthur."
"Huh? what's that Annie? can you repeat that again I can't hear you." Arthur replied.
"Arthur, you're being rude to the lady here." Jack said sternly to Arthur.
The young elvish woman stared at Arthur, and said, "You're an asshole, you know that Arthur."
"No I'm being serious right here, I'm not making fun of her. And Elizabeth Illwyn Ainsworth don't berate on me with that dirty talk of yours." Arthur explained while being accused of nothing wrong.
"U-Um g-guys don't fight okay. I'll-i'll just repeat my question, which is y-you lost right Arthur?" fighting her extreme shyness Annie spoke away.
"Oooooh, of course i lost, you guys ganged up on me which to be fair is NOT fair! And Annie you got to work on that extreme shyness of yours okay." Said Arthur righteously.
"You're such a stupid man aren't you Arthur." Elizabeth said in spite.
Arthur felt slightly annoyed and glared at Elizabeth as if laser beams could fly at any moments from his eyes. Frustrated, Arthur thought out loud, "Now where's fatty when I need him the most."
From a distance, Arthur saw a big young man emerged from a thick forest while waving his hand, He ran and yelled, "GUUUUYYSSS!!!! I'M HERE!!!! AM I LATE OR SOMETHING!!!!"
"Speak of the devil, just when I thought about it." Arthur said while making an evil expression.
"You want me to speak?" Jack said.
Arthur facepalmed at Jack response, "Ugh!!! You idiot! Yes, technically you're a devil, but I'm saying it metaphorically." He explained.
"I think you're making the wrong remarks here, to be fair I'm more intelligence than you. And I'm sorry for misunderstanding your words."
"Sometimes I wonder, what happens in those brains of yours." Arthur rolled his eye.
"Yes, sometimes I wonder too, the best of god creations." Jack eyes twinkled, marveled at the thought.
"Y-Yo-You!! I give up, I didn't want to argue anymore! I think my head will explode just by talking to you."
----
The big young man arrived at the site where Arthur and the rest are, he panted and tried to catch his breath at the same time. After a while, he said, "So, do I miss anything?"
Arthur and the rest glared at the big young man and at the same time, Arthur said, "Mr. Robert Anderson! You, sir, owe me a thousand push up!"
Robert confused at the statement and said, "W-What did I do wrong?"
Watching the comedic conversation between Arthur, Jack, and Robert made Annie giggled, and Elizabeth that was standing beside her said, "These idiots, one with a bird for a brain, the other with a gear for a brain, and one more with a belly for a brain. *Sigh* What a waste of time."