"Sometimes, you ask the questions only after knowing what the answer is."
With his hands out to the side, one of the Wave Users walked towards the main gate of the Pinnacle Research Institute casually. As the security guards stepped out from the barriers that were risen automatically, the man pulled off his hood, revealing a scarred face that once belonged to a handsome young man.
His face was completely disfigured in a horrendous accident, and he lost all of his hair. He had ghostly white skin and a pair of dark eyes. As he took off the hood, the guard immediately noticed a spiraling pattern over his right eye.
It was that of a winding serpent.
"Halt!" The security guard said, putting a hand out before the Wave was channeled through his body and jets of steam started to sizzle from the surface of his skin, "The Institute is now under lockdown!"
"Don't mind me." The man smiled, his hand out and forward as a dark green phantom started to materialize over his arm before the serpent manifested. The spiraling pattern around his eye now pulsed with life, and he cracked into an ugly smile, "I am just an Alumni visiting the old school! That is all!"
"Surging Charge!" The security guard roared, his feet puncturing through the ground as he pushed off and dashed towards the man with the Wave surrounding his entire body like a shield.
As the guard flew through the air, the serpent on the attacking man's arm hissed and shot out a massive drop of a dark brown liquid from its mouths. The liquid looked initially like blood before it rapidly expanded and thickened into a viscous membrane of sorts, wrapping around the body of the security guard like a bag and sealing up behind him, cutting off the airflow and suffocating the guard in a single swift second.
"Hm......They say complacency is the death of progress......" The man turned and looked at the struggling guard trapped within the dark brown membrane as his fingerprints are shown through its elastic surface, "Perhaps life's been treating you too well...... It has been treating all of you too well, to the point that we have all forgotten about the truly important things in life."
Power. Trutth. Answers. Control.
"Master..." Sets of other Wave users approached the man with the Serpent slowly dissipating away.
"Continue with the plan." He waved his hand before turning and looking at the guard's body that's now being slowly digested within the brown bag. In around twenty minutes, there should be hints of the guard anywhere anymore, but before then, the body in the street serves as an excellent warning.
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WE ARE THE INVERTED QUESTIONS! AND WE DEMAND CONTROL OF THE PORTAL AS THE FOURTH WAR NEARS!
All across the city, various monuments were blown up by pre-set Explosive Casts before the declarations were left behind everywhere. The city's security forces were immediately mobilized, and the various qualified Wave users were also summoned to aid in the peace-keeping efforts.
As the King of Varous called his internal ministers to gather, none appeared. Instead, he was visited by a man in a dark cloak with a Book of Casts the color of crimson.
"Who are you?! What have you done to my kingdom?!" The King asked, raising from his throne before reaching a hand towards his sword that has incantations of Casts all over it, but the moment his hands made contact with the blade handle, it blew up and blasted the hand of the King clean off. Pieces of flesh and bones splattered all across the throne, and he dropped to a knee, screaming in pain.
The man pulled off his hood and revealed his short red hair and a face filled with various dark piercings. With a wicked smile, he showed the king his golden teeth before leaning in close and take a good look at the one true ruler of the Kingdom.
"Sometimes, you ask a question without the hope of knowing the answer. Hehehehe......" The man said, walking past the king as he slapped him on the shoulder, "If you do not follow my orders, you will blow up like your blade. Does it make sense?"
"That was a question asked, knowing the answer, by the way." Tilting his head back and letting his laugh echo through the chamber, the red-haired man spun around and sat back on the throne as the king sat powerlessly and watched his city burn.
He had heard rumors of the group known as the Inverted Questions operating within his Kingdom, but with diplomatic tensions arising elsewhere, he sent his most capable generals away. He thought he could trust his interior ministers, but all of them appeared to be conveniently busy today.
Is today the last day of the Kingdom of Varous? He wondered, biting into his lips until the pain from his wrist subsided ever so slightly, or rather, is today the last day of peace in nine hundred years? Has the War of the Fourth Millennium finally started?
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When the explosions went off all around the city, Lera was busy finishing the latest theory book on the functionality of the supposed central control module of the Portal. Then, she continued drawing the diagrams of how the Portal is supposed to work on a piece of scratch paper as the entire city was rocked to its core.
The shelves shook and a handful of books fell off. Then, a howling alarm echoed through the entire school grounds.
"What the......" Lera was frozen in place briefly before a conditional Cast was activated in the room, and a block of text appeared on the walls of the tower and over the top of the shelves.
The Institute is currently under attack, and a full lockdown will be enacted. Please make you that you are hiding in the indicated secure location.
Huh......Ain't that great. So where is the closest secure location? Lera wondered, before looking all around her.
In terms of security, there is really no other place quite like the base of the Tower of Constellation when a literal barrier was put in place to prevent those without permission from getting in. Unless you just blow everything up on your way in.
The entire city rocked again as a second string of explosions went off. Then, the tower itself was shaken. The two events felt completely independent, and before Lera can react, the bottom of the Tower of Constellation was blown up and the barrier that surrounded the Portal was torn wide open. Quickly hiding behind a shelf, Lera tried her best to not make any noise at all as a group of Wave users in dark hoods walked straight through the opening.
"LONG TIME NO SEE! MY OLD FRIEND!" One of the figures said, pulling off his hood and revealing himself to be the man with the Serpent manifestation. His underlings shared an awkward glance before the man turned around and pointed at them.
"You, get over there." He said, directing the group of men to scatter around the parts of the base of the Portal, "And YOU! Move it! Stand here."
Standing around the base of the Portal and looking confused, the group of lackeys then watched their leader manifested his serpent, extending it out and uses it as a grappling hook to elevate himself high up into the air, standing right in front of the stone ring. Then, he looked at the dark green serpent attached to his right arm and slammed it right at the center of the structure.
That's part of the control module! Lera took in a cold gasp and pinned her fingers on the piece of scratch paper that she somehow took with her. Tracing the lines she drew down, she confirmed that each of the men was standing exactly at the various junction nodes of the portal's circuit architecture, though she hadn't figured out what each of the nodes represents yet.
Without a question, this man is trying to do something to activate the Portal. Even though Lera wouldn't be comfortable saying that she has mastered the understanding of the mechanisms of operation for the Portal, even she can tell that he is trying to force the portal open.
As the serpent bit into the tablet positioned at the center of the vertically aligned stone ring, a jolt of Wave Energy was drawn out from the body of the man before being injected into the massive unending network of the Portal itself.
Then, a low rumble quaked the ground as the Portal roared to life. Lines of blue light traveled down and through the massive structure, running over the various written lines and incantations of the pieces of rocks and stone columns like flowing water through channels.
Bright light flashes from the points where the two hooded men were standing and their screams were all but brief before their bodies were completely disintegrated. Lera covered her mouth and tried not to make a sound, but her hands had started to tremble uncontrollably.
"ARGHHHH! USELESS!" The man standing atop the Portal's structure screamed out in anger, "All right, bring in the big guns!"
The shadows of a big group of people emerged through the opening in the tower, and the hooded figures pushed a handful of Institute Research staff over the two locations that the two disintegrated hooded man were just standing on before the entire Portal pulsed again, and two bright flashes of light swallowed them whole once again.
The group of people screamed as their colleagues were killed right in front of them, and a few of them that tried to resist and fight back was knocked out immediately by a gigantic man that looked at least two meters tall. Every movement of his seems to generate a small gust of wind, and he picked up an overweight man out from the group of people before throwing him into one of the spots.
"Try this, Jiyu." The giant said before turning around, "he's the only surviving professor, and that meant his Wave reserve should be plenty."
"Thank you, Darl. You are always reliable and......" Jiyu said, briefly turning to look at the man before he suddenly made a howling noise, "HOOOWEEE! It's YOU! Richard! You bastard!"
Lera gasped for air as her entire body was frozen by fear. Her eyes were as wide as they can ever be, and tears flowed uncontrollably down her face. She had already witnessed so much today, and now......the old man that welcomed her into the Institute is now lying on the ground, completely bloodied up with his right lower leg missing.
"Who took out his legs?!" Jiyu threw his arms out and asked the room, "The old man can barely move around as it is! You are so cruel!"
"Jiyu......Satoru......" Professor Richard pressed himself up on the ground as his face was twisted with pain and effort, "You have no idea what you are doing......"
'The contrary, Professor." Jiyu smiled, "I have finally done my homework, this time. Plus, after you gave me a good beating last time, I made sure to check my calculations before......"
"NO!" Professor Richard rose up and pointed a finger forward before firing off a shot of concentrated wave energy from his finger. Jiyu's Serpent surged ahead and knocked aside the blast before Darl, the gigantic man grabbed the back of Professor Richard's neck and slammed his face into the ground.
"Let's try this once again." Jiyu turned around, "Darl, you might wanna take a step back."
With a surge of Wave from within his Serpent, the entire Portal was activated once more. Blue light traveled down the lines and incantations the same way that Lera knew it would. With blood flowing out from his mouth, Professor Richard tilted his head sideways, and he spotted Lera sitting in the corner, hiding in the darkness.
Then, he saw her hands slowly reaching towards her Book of Casts, and his eyes widened before he shook his head as violently as he can, his face scrubbing along the rough ground as blood rushed out from his teeth.
However, Lera cannot let him die like this. As her courage and anger overcame her fear, the tips of her fingers found the inner pages of her Book of Casts.
She may only be proficient with Utility-style casts...she may only be a first-year student, and near the bottom of the power scale, she isn't going to stand by and watch as the one that introduced her to this new life die like this!
"DON'T!" The Professor shouted, and his voice echoed in the entire tower like thunder, "DON'T LET THINGS END LIKE THIS! DON'T THROW IT ALL AWAY!"
"How pitiful......" Darl murmured as the body of professor Richard disappeared, bathed by the light, though he didn't know that Richard wasn't pleading for his life, but rather asking Lera not to willingly throw her own away.
"It's......IT'S WORKING!" Jiyu screamed excitedly before he threw his hands in the air, "The old man's done it!"
With the Portal roaring to life, beams of light was projected from the various corners of the stone ring before all of those individual beams focused back on the tablet in front of Jiyu.
"Now......the answer to all of this world's questions......" With a smile from ear to ear, Jiyu bent over his body over the piece of a tablet that went from an archeological artifact to a shining and reflective piece of an alien object made with glass. With the Serpent by his side, he was prepared to activate the portal when he caught the reflection of a girl flying through the air towards him.