"So let me get this straight," Flicker said, turning to the nine new people in the room. "You all have been staying here for the past couple of weeks as Akuma has been gathering you after the attacks, right?"
Murmurs of yeah and m-hmm came from throughout the room.
"Wait," Ember said, turning to Akuma. "How long was I out when you first brought me here?"
Akuma shrugged. "I'd guess about... three weeks?"
Ember gawked and asked, "Why was I out for three weeks?"
Akuma shrugged again. "You must have been so exhausted, and when people other than me travel through the shadows, it sort of multiplies your exhaustion by about ten or twenty."
"So then when did the attacks start?" Flicker said, raising her voice over Ember and Akuma.
"About two weeks ago," a man named Lucifer said, tracing his gloved hand over a gemstone attached to the top of his cane, glowing a bright, neon yellow. The cane, or rather staff based on the size, had three parts, a shaft, a gem, and a hilt. The shaft and gem seemed to be made out of the same material, and the hilt had a rose-gold color, but seemed to have a faint pink and blue glow. "They attacked the Wilds first, hitting small groups of people first."
Flicker scribbled something down on a notepad Akuma had made for her. "What about the big cities?"
"Air City was the first one to be hit by anything," a man in full plate metal armor with a glowing orange spear sitting by him said. His name was Vengeance, and he apparently had the ability to manipulate metals and had minor telekinesis, but only when it came to metal. "I was visiting there when it got hit. People screaming, everybody changing genetically. My business partner started turning into a bunch of insects. My boss' skin started flaking off, revealing bare muscle and bones."
A kid next to him burst out laughing. His name was Lynx, and he had the ability to absorb, create, and manipulate energy down to the subatomic level. Like so far as to physically change an element by turning a single proton into a neutron or an electron or something like that. His brown hair shook as he laughed, his grey eyes sealed tight in humor.
"Is something funny to you?" Vengeance snarled when Lynx finally stopped laughing.
Lynx cleared his throat and wiped his eyes. "I'm sorry, Vengeance. I just pictured what your boss's face would look like when he started screaming."
Vengeance rolled his eyes. But the man next to him wearing a metallic-colored skull-shaped mask snickered.
"What's so funny to you, Theta?" Vengeance growled at him.
Theta smirked. He had the ability to control all fluids and their current state. Basically, if it was a fluid at room temperature with no forces acting upon it, he could control it. "Well, Vengeance, I just think your reaction to what Lynx thought was absolutely hilarious."
"I don't see what's funny about this at all," spoke a voice with a distinct Australian accent. The Pumpkin King stood up, a man with a face that appeared to look like a pumpkin. He had a giant warhammer with a sharpened edge, and, of course, he could grow pumpkins anywhere, any size or shape, and use them to fight. "The poor man lost all his skin. Is he dead?" he said as he turned toward Vengeance.
Lucifer shook his head. "I would've been able to tell if he was dead." Lucifer, not at all surprisingly, had the ability to tell if a person that someone knew was alive or dead. He also had powers with life energy and such. "He probably gained some sort of control over his blood or body mass. I mean, from what I've seen, people's bodies sort of automatically adapted to the powers in a way that would immediately help them. So someone who had the ability to converse with birds, for example, would likely start to look more and more like a bird, so as to not scare off the birds so that they can talk to them."
Silence dropped like a pin as everyone contemplated this. Finally, a guy stood up and said, "Is anybody thirsty? I'm feeling like coffee."
"Sit down, Genesis," Akuma said as he rolled his eyes.
Genesis sat down, nervously glancing around at everyone in the room, especially at Ember. He was Akuma's son, and he had the ability of Creation, where he could make anything out of nothing, and nothing out of anything.
Ember glanced at Genesis and offered a light smile, which made Genesis jump and hide behind the person next to him.
"Genesis," the guy said with a sigh. "He was only smiling at you."
"You don't know that, Prime," Genesis said, shuddering, his black hair hiding his light magenta eyes. "He could've been luring me to my death!"
"Your father trusts him, so you should trust him," Prime said, shaking his head. Accompanied by another sigh, he said, "Genesis is a little bit paranoid. About everything."
Prime had the ability to manipulate technology and imbue items with technology, allowing him to control them. All in all, it was a pretty helpful power, as he could just imbue a rock with technology and use the imbued rock to create a shield or a set of armor or something like that.
The guy sitting next to Flicker snorted, and everyone turned toward a guy named Revenant, a man who was half a robot and half a corpse trapped inside the robot. Evidently, he was essentially immortal. He leaned on his battle axe as he said, "Calling Genesis paranoid of all things is the biggest understatement in all of existence." he snorted again. "Słaby mały idiota, Genesis."
Genesis rolled his eyes and moved back from behind Prime. He turned to look at Ember and said, "Sorry about that. And he was speaking Polish, for those who didn't understand. He said 'weak little idiot, Genesis'."
"So I'm not the only one who understood that," the last person said with a smirk. His name was Erebus, and he had powers of summoning the dead and wielding them to his command. His bright red hair, not orange as in redhead but literally red hair, sitting perfectly still on his head. He too had a cane, but his was adorned with a small skull instead of a gemstone. "Dobrze wiedzieć, że niektórzy z nas mówią po polsku."
"Yes, it is good that somebody here also speaks Polish," Akuma said, rolling his eyes at them.
Ember ran through the mental list of everyone in the room. Him, Flicker, Nightmare, Akuma, Genesis, Erebus, Prime, Lucifer, Theta, Revenant, Pumpkin King, Vengeance, and Lynx. Fire powers, shadow powers, darkness powers, creation, resurrection powers, technology powers, death powers, liquid powers, immortality, pumpkin powers, metal powers, and energy powers.
"So what city got hit next?" Flicker asked. "I think Fire City was hit last, because they hadn't been hit yet when I came."
Erebus nodded as he said, "The news of you disappearing was just starting to circulate when the attacks hit. But the odd thing is that you only just appeared here today when you disappeared a week ago."
Flicker's jaw dropped, and she twisted her head to stare daggers at Akuma as she said, "What does he mean that I disappeared a week ago?"
Akuma shrugged. "When I pulled you into here, I used a technique that pulls you from the past and brings you to the present. For you, it seems like I only pulled you then, but to everyone else you disappeared earlier."
Flicker sat there for a moment, as Ember could see tears welling up in her eyes, before she broke down and started crying, falling into Ember's waiting hug.
"What?" Akuma said as Ember glared at him. "It was the safest way to bring her here without knocking her out!"
Ember rolled his eyes and hugged Flicker tighter, the silence in the room stiff and uncomfortable.
"Can someone say something, please?" Genesis squeaked, the tension in the room obviously getting to him.
Vengeance scoffed and stood. He started walking towards the staircase where they had all come from silently.
"Where do you think you're going?" Akuma yelled at him, his voice annoyed and tired.
Vengeance paused and turned around slowly, a glare plastered on his face. "I'm going to bed. This insanity drew every last bit of will to stay awake out of me."
Akuma rolled his eyes as Vengeance trudged up the stairs, pausing at the top to reach his hand out to make his spear fly into it.
"Don't worry," Genesis said, a smile spreading across his face. "Vengeance can sleep for days on end, so we probably won't see him for a while."
Ember smiled at him, as everyone else sat there, clearly uncomfortable.
Lucifer finally spoke, breaking the silence. "So, Ember, what brought you here? You're still only a fire elemental, so why are you here?"
Ember glared at Akuma and said, "He brought me here."
Akuma shrugged. "He needed to be brought here to keep up with my plans. Or, really, his plans."
"His plans?" Ember asked, confused.
Prime rolled his eyes. "Did Akuma show you that big and scary thing he can do, that thing called Remnant?"
Ember nodded, remembering the large shadowy creature that frightened him when he first met Akuma.
"He's a visionary," Prime said, putting air quotes around the visionary. "He can essentially see the future and show it to Akuma, and Remnant apparently thought it was important to bring you here in order for his future to happen."
Akuma frowned and said, "It was entirely necessary for Ember to be here. The whole plan would have collapsed if he wasn't here."
"Then what about Flicker?" Lucifer said, resting his head on his hands, propped up on his knees as his face had a cheeky grin on it.
Akuma opened his mouth to speak, but paused as his eyes went wide, realizing he was trapped.
Lucifer and Prime burst out laughing at Akuma's reaction, eventually the whole group minus Akuma laughing with them. Akuma's expression was annoyed yet slightly amused.
When they all finished laughing, Ember noticed a distinct look on Akuma's face, one that said I'm probably going to commit various unforgivable war crimes later just to piss you off.
Ember grinned at him, and Akuma's expression softened, seeing the naive and earnest expression on his face.
"It's been a while since I've heard people laughing," Akuma said, a smile finally making its way onto his face.
Ember glanced back around at everyone who now had smiles on their faces. Even Genesis managed to put a grin on his face.
Then, Lucifer turned to Ember and said, "Y'know, we're more like a big and happy family than just a group of people who just happened to meet each other after a life changing event."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The night wore on, and people slowly began retiring to their rooms. Eventually, even Flicker said goodnight to Ember and went upstairs in search of her own room.
And then it was just Ember and Akuma sitting around downstairs, the two of them lounging in black leather chairs.
To be completely honest, Ember couldn't tell if Akuma was awake or not, so when he realized how late it must have been, he finally stood and slowly creeped over to the staircase, heading up.
A single stair creaked, and Akuma startled awake, making Ember jump. "What?" Akuma said, attempting to seem like he only dozed off for a minute in the middle of a conversation.
Ember saw Akuma swivel his head around before landing on him. "Where'd everyone else go?"
Ember yawned and said, "To bed, I'd guess. I think it's like two in the morning."
Akuma also yawned after seeing Ember yawn, and said, "Alright. But I do have something to tell you really quickly."
Ember sighed and trudged down the stairs before collapsing back into the armchair again. He nodded to Akuma who leaned forward conspiratorially.
"These people, especially people like Vengeance and Revenant, don't mess with them. If they ever do anything like shove you around, don't fight back. Just let them blow off their steam, and they'll stop eventually."
Ember chuckled nervously. "That's not very comforting, that they'll stop eventually."
Akuma barked a signature laugh of his before saying, "Don't worry, if they do try anything, I'll know."
Ember chose not to question that and said, "So can I go to bed now?"
"One more thing," Akuma said, rolling his eyes. "I was wondering if you could join me tomorrow in going to a market to get food and stuff. Everyone usually disagrees, because they just hate it or something, but it's actually really interesting even though it's chaotic as hell."
Ember shrugged. "When would we be going?"
Akuma thought for a moment. "Well, it's called the Night Market, so you get three guesses when we go and the first two don't count."
Ember paused. "Isn't the Night Market full of smugglers and bounty hunters and people like that?"
Akuma nodded and said, "What, do you think we get money by doing honest work?" He paused, waiting for an answer. "No. Revenant actually asked me about training you into a bounty hunter or something. He really thinks you have potential and he hasn't even seen you fight yet."
Ember gulped. "And what if I don't want to be a smuggler or a bounty hunter?"
"Then you become one of our supply runners," Akuma said, his tone even and flat. "We do actually have a couple of people who run honest businesses. Pumpkin King, Erebus, and Prime actually run businesses. Prime sells and repairs electronics, Pumpkin King sells pumpkins obviously, and Erebus takes payment to allow people to talk to their dead relatives. At least Pumpkin King and Prime require supply runners to bring their stuff to and from the market. Usually Genesis, Lucifer, and Theta are our supply runners, but Lucifer also does Bounty Hunting occasionally."
"So my options are basically either Bounty Hunter or running around with pumpkins," Ember said, slightly disappointed.
Akuma nodded. "Confidentially, I think you'd be better off with the Bounty Hunter side."
This made Ember perk up, his interest at the highest point it's been at in a while. "You actually think I could become a bounty hunter?"
Akuma nodded. "We just need to get a little muscle on you, and then it won't be that big of a deal." He pointed to the staircase and said, "But now you need sleep if you want to start training tomorrow."
Ember nodded and started walking toward the staircase, his tire slowing him down to a trudge as he approached the staircase. He paused before beginning his ascent. "Akuma, do you actually think I can do this?"
Akuma laughed and said, "Kid, if anyone can do it, it's gonna be you."
Ember smiled and said, "Thank you, Akuma. Good night,"
"Good night Ember," Akuma said as Ember began to climb the stairs toward the bedrooms.