“And now,” said a man who was looking down at the final moments of that last major pitched battle, “for you.”
His eyes shifted their focus from the sight of the Flesh Tanks gorging themselves and to a massively oversized tree in the distance.
“I wonder what meaningless delusions are going through that mind of yours right now. Maybe you believe that you’ll somehow pull something out of your wooden ass, or maybe that I’ll just keel over and die, or perhaps that some Disney Star Wars-esque ‘plot’ writing will simply alter reality on the fly because there needs to be a massive shakeup and the writers can’t be bothered to make a decent story. Either way, your hopes are in vain. That is if you even have any at this point.”
The giant of a man looked over to his left. There, in the air alongside him was his wife. She was here to add her fury to the fight that was soon to come, and while they both wanted to rush in and demolish that overgrown bonsai they were waiting for a few others to arrive. One quickly joined them, adding his massive, scaled frame to their group.
“My Master, I have come as per your orders.”
Kain looked over his shoulder at the absolutely gigantic undead dragon that was using a mix of magic and the flapping of its wings to keep itself roughly in place in the air.
“Ah, Pluton! So glad you could join us. I understand you finally finished whatever it was that you were doing in the corpse of Ititlis?”
Pluton nodded, “Yes, my Master.”
“And I hear you made a migrant nation of your own, as well. I applaud your imagination and creativity, as well as your ambition. If you need anything, just let me know.”
Pluton would have asked to be Kain’s personal mount again, but his own poor view of himself prevented him from doing that. It was a shame that he didn’t do it, too. If he had, it was more than likely that Kain would have accepted right then and there.
“I live to serve, my Master.”
“You aren’t even alive, to begin with.”
Another voice joined the group, along with a body. Or, rather, two voices and bodies joined the group, both of them looking rather young.
“Ah, Razzy, Lizzy. Glad you could make it. I assume that break just started a few minutes ago?”
At Alexis’ words, the royal twins wanted to ask their mother to not use those nicknames, but they had already asked for that at least a thousand or more times by now, and Alexis simply refused to stop. As such, they knew when to throw in the towel, or at least they knew when to do so regarding some things.
“Yeah, but we do have a request.”
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“Oh?” Kain raised an eyebrow at this. “What request is that?”
“Can we stream this fight live?”
“Stream it… live?”
Kain was confused. Wasn’t this just going to be a quick, in and out, hit and run death blow of a strike? At least, that is what he had planned for this to be. He had wanted them to strike as one, wipe the arrogant, oversized narcissist of a tree out, and then make it back in time for dinner. That was the plan, anyway. But it seemed the twins had some kind of an idea that ran contrary to that. Well, he had time, so he might as well hear them out.
“Yes. I mean, yes, sir.”
Another voice found its way into the immediate vicinity. A crack in spacetime formed before ripping open into a gash that revealed a room filled with no small number of models, posters, merchandise, and other such things. The gash opened wider, and from his hiding spot deep in the bowels of the Dungeon, the Dungeon Master himself, Zero Noir nervously floated out.
“Oh. I didn’t expect to see you ever leave your man-cave unless forced to.” Alexis said mockingly. “Did you run out of tissues and model paint?”
“Lexi, please,” Kain said in a bit of light chastisement. “That said, I did not expect you to come out like this. Is everything alright? You don’t need to come out here unless you feel you want to or need to.”
Zero Noir shook his giant, metal head. “No. I need to be here, and not just to record the fight.” He then pointed to the giant tree in the distance. “He is trying to break into the Dungeon. I don’t want that. He needs to go. I… I want to prove that I’m not just some worthless hermit that leeches off of you all. I… I don’t want my new life to be threatened, and if he keeps doing that, he’s going to put me and my life at risk. I can’t have that.”
“Oh…” Alexis said, rather taken aback by Zero Noir’s rather selfish selflessness. “I didn’t expect you to even voice a complaint.”
“Well, I have a lot of models to paint, and a lot of doujin to draw. If the Dungeon is breached, that is time I can’t spend doing what I like to do.”
“AND THERE IT IS!” Alexis yelled, obviously thrilled that the ‘giant trash-can man’ was still at least somewhat true to the mocking title she and so many others had given him.
“So…. About this ‘streaming the fight’, thing.” Kain said, trying to move on from things.
“Ah, yes. I can set up a few cameras and capture the fight from multiple angles, patch it through to the tv sets and theatres, and then, after that, patch it all together into a decent video and sell it on the open market. It would be an excellent propaganda piece and would likely make quite a lot in sales. I mean, it isn’t every day that the average person gets to see an Avengers-style team up against a massive, potentially world-ending threat, let alone see it happen live and then have the privilege of getting an edited copy of the fight to keep around and watch from time to time.”
“Avengers?” Alexis asked. “Who or what are those?”
“Fine.” Replied Kain, ignoring the confusion of both Pluton and his wife. “But if we are to make it a massive hit, or at least do a decent job, then just the group we have here isn’t going to be enough, now is it?”
Though he had no musculature to show any emotion with, Zero Noir practically beamed with excitement, seemingly unaware that Kain, Elizabeth, and Raziel seemed to know what he was talking about regarding an ‘Avengers-style team up’.
“Oh, yeah! Yes! I’ll send out more invites! Just hold on a moment and I’ll make sure that-.”
Before he could finish, Raziel and Elizabeth proved to their father that his hunch about them being either reincarnators or transmigrators was correct when they used their combined magical potential to conjure a line of text and special effects in midair. As the text appeared, they both shouted at the top of their lungs as it did.
“EVERYONE IS HERE!”