Shortly after Spooky, Bendy, and Sans left, and while there wasn’t anybody around besides the trio, Lotte asked “Say Akko, Bendy said that you know how to get in contact with Earth’s world-spirit. Could you call her up any time?” slightly nervously. It would not be inaccurate to compare meeting Jesus to this, as far as… pretty much anyone with any connection to spirits went.
Akko looked up from her camera after dealing with the pictures she’d taken. “Well, I’m not sure about this place. That would involve her actually showing up, and this isn’t quite Earth, it’s basically it’s own pocket dimension, and I’m not sure it’s still part of Earth, if it ever was. Maybe if I knew how this place got made, but I don’t want to risk weird inter-dimensional stuff messing with Earth’s spirit… projection… thing, since that tends to reflect on the thing it represents. Once we get back to Earth proper, then sure. Until then, nope, not chancing it.” she responded. Earth probably wouldn’t show up if there was any risk of something going wrong because of the sheer casualties any such incident would cause, but why risk it?
“Wouldn’t it just not show up if it couldn’t show up properly?” Sucy asked.
Lotte grimaced. “Not... necessarily. Sometimes if a spirit tries to show up too far from it’s main body, or pushes some kind of sympathetic link too hard, they… explode.” As Sucy blinked but Akko merely nodded, Lotte continued. “Twice.”
“Yeah, Gramps explained why it was a bad idea.” Akko agreed. Bad things happened when projections overextended themselves, if anything happened at all. Not as much of a problem when trying to put pieces back together though.
*** Several Days Later ***
A few days had passed since the Papililiodya incident, and while Diana had ended up with the credit for it, Akko didn’t really mind. As long as everybody got out alive and mentally sound, it didn’t matter much to her who did what, and Diana hadn’t exactly trumpeted it, which suggested the teachers had assumed her responsibility in resolving the incident.
Toriel, Papyrus, and Undyne were visiting next, all together actually. Undyne’s days off from police work often coincided with one of Toriel’s days off from the school, while Papyrus’ diner wasn’t open on Sundays to begin with.
A *Vwoorp* announced their arrival to the dorm room, Sans leaving a few moments later to visit Gaster. “HELLO AKKO! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, HAVE ARRIVED!” Papyrus announced. While he was exuberant, he usually kept it from getting annoying, and people who did get annoyed tended to feel like they’d punched a little kid in the face.
“How has the food been my child?” Toriel asked. She always got worked up when she felt someone hadn’t been feeding Akko properly, which tended to mean anything that wasn’t her cooking, though family friends were usually exempted. Akko still felt guilty about not telling her about Asriel or Chara, but they’d made her promise them not to, and she wouldn’t want them blabbing her secrets.
“How are ya squirt?” Undyne asked with her usual snaggle-tooth grin. She and Alphys were an official thing these days. Really, they had been since the Barrier was destroyed. Undyne was a police officer, while Alphys was working with Professor Membrane to get Monster magi-tech functioning in modern society, which was made more difficult by much lower levels of mana on the surface, and there weren’t nearly enough Monsters to produce enough excess mana to power enough machines for everybody on even Earth Prime.
“Could use variety, fine, made some new friends,” she answered in order, gesturing to Lotte and Sucy as she finished.
“Uh, hi.” Lotte waved. Sucy merely stared at them, tilting her head slightly. Akko was pretty sure she was just a naturally quiet person, as Papyrus was naturally loud, now that she knew the other girl better.
“Well don’t get any funny ideas. Me and the kid are besties!” Undyne proclaimed in a joking manner, grabbing Akko by the arm and dragging her over to noogie her, to Akko’s mild exasperation.
“NOT SO FAST! I WAS THEIR FRIEND FIRST!” Papyrus jabbed.
“Well, I knew Spooky before either of you, so by that logic-” Akko was interrupted by a polite cough from Toriel before their old argument could proceed any further along it’s well-trodden path.
“I believe you were introducing us to your new friends my child?” she interjected.
“Oh, right. Lotte likes to read and her family owns a magic shop in Finland, and Sucy is from the Philippines, and puts up a creepy front because she thinks how people react is funny, but it’s somewhat genuine, kind of like Spooky.” Akko had talked to Spooky and Bendy about what they’d learned and picked up a few new things from the two girls. “She’s really good with potions too.” she added.
“INTERESTING! SANS TELLS ME POTIONS ARE SOMETHING OF A LOST ART AMONG MONSTERS. PLANTS HAD TROUBLE GROWING WITHOUT SUNLIGHT, AS CAVES ARE WONT TO BE, AND WHILE RAW MAGIC CAN DO THE SAME JOB, IT MESSES WITH THEIR CHEMISTRY TOO MUCH FOR THE POTIONS TO WORK THE SAME. WE’VE BEEN WORKING TO RELEARN THE SKILLS, BUT SO MANY MAGICAL PLANTS AREN’T AROUND THESE DAYS THAT WE’VE BEEN HAVING TROUBLE. YOU MUST BE VERY DEDICATED TO YOUR CRAFT!” Papyrus stated with some admiration. If there was one thing Papyrus respected, it was dedication.
“Uh, thanks.” Sucy nodded at him with mild bewilderment. She seemed a little unused to such earnest compliments with neither snark, nor ulterior motives attached. Only the most cold-hearted of people could remain unmoved by Papyrus if he was able to get a word in edgewise.
A few minutes later, they were touring the academy, Undyne demonstrating her use of spears and having wandered off to do it, with Toriel having left to make sure she didn’t get near the kitchens, or cause any other incidents. Undyne had a bad habit of leaving the teachers or equivalent disgruntled by her over-the-top antics, though Toriel or Alphys usually reined her in before she caused any true problems. It wasn’t that Undyne was overly reckless (though she was a little bit reckless) it was more that she wasn’t the type to really think through what she was doing, which was the main reason she could bring herself to try to kill Akko back in the Underground, the other being psyching herself up/talking herself into it, as, much like Asgore, she wasn’t really the sort of person to kill without some serious provocation. Akko didn’t have to SOUL-Suicide when she died, and DT-trait humans retained full awareness of what was happening around them after being reduced to a SOUL, so she’d heard the immediate reactions to her death from a few people. That was the main reason she went directly to shattering her own SOUL whenever she died, these days anyway.
“Oh, it’s Diana.” she noticed down one of the side halls as the quartet walked, Papyrus oohing and aawing at Sucy and Lotte’s explanations of what various things were. As usual, Hannah and Barbara flanked the green and blond-haired girl.
While she’d need to engage a Fight to really know for sure, as her Justice Magic was too weak for Check to tell her outside one, the green streak made her suspect Kindness was Diana’s dominant Trait, as she didn’t seem the type to use highlights. While it wasn’t a 100% thing, a person’s eyes or hair would often match their SOUL-Trait. Purple-haired people were nigh-universally PV-Trait SOULs, for example. She seemed a little too impatient for her eyes to be the match, as hypocritical as it was for Akko to jab anyone about that, after the incident with correcting the teacher instead of waiting until after class. Respecting the teachers themselves, if not their subject matter was something that had been drilled into her by the Japanese education system… so long as she was in their classroom anyway. She chafed under direct authority too much to act particularly obedient when not in the center of a teacher’s authority.
“HELLO THERE HUMANS! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WOULD LIKE TO INTRODUCE MYSELF!” Papyrus called attention to both himself and the rest of the group. As he walked over, and they followed him, he continued “I LIKE SPAGHETTI, AND MY FAVORITE COLOR IS RED! ANY FRIEND OF AKKO’S IS A FRIEND OF MINE!” he proclaimed.
“Uh, well, I’m not sure ‘friends’ is the word I would use.” Akko corrected. “Acquaintances is a better word.” she probably should have informed them of her most recent network of connections with the locals. She could only really keep track of every set because of her perfect memory, but a basic run-down wouldn’t have been out of place. She really only did that when she had disparate groups working together to stop some supervillain or catastrophe and she had to play mediator to a bunch of conflicting personalities.
“Yeah, we’re not friends.” Barbara pointedly stated.
“WELL, I SHALL DO MY BEST TO REMEDY THAT! COME, LET US DISCUSS YOUR ISSUES.” He said, putting on a pair of reader’s glasses.
“Wait a minute, we don’t-” Hannah began.
“NONSENSE!” He grabbed each of them by the arm and started to drag them off. “EVERYONE WHO DISLIKES AKKO HAS EITHER TURNED OUT TO HAVE MAJOR EMOTIONAL TURMOIL GOING ON, OR TURNED OUT TO BE MISSING PART OF THEIR SOUL! I’M SURE YOU HAVE SOME SORT OF PROBLEM, AND YOU’RE TAKING IT OUT ON PEOPLE YOU PERCEIVE AS BEING LOWER ON THE SOCIAL LADDER!” he explained, having been taking some psychology classes to try and help his father with his issues. While Hannah looked offended, Barbara seemed briefly stricken.
“AHA! I THOUGHT SO! LET’S DISCUSS THIS MORE PRIVATELY.” The skeleton and his… patients disappeared around the corner.
“Well, that happened.” Sucy muttered.
“That was weird.” Lotte agreed.
“Papyrus is a unique person.” Akko offered by way of explanation.
Diana blinked, then shook herself slightly to focus. “Miss Kagari, I was hoping to talk to you.” She fixed Akko with a stern look. “I distinctly recall my Check telling me that Shiny Rod was fake, but you performed a spell with it. After reading it off a card. No practice, so the only other explanation is help from a powerful artifact. Except that would mean my Check was wrong, and few things can affect a Check besides Justice Magic, which only improves a Check’s accuracy.” Her eyes narrowed. “What, exactly, is going on?”
“Not sure what you’re so worked up about. The Shiny Rod worked, and everything turned out okay, so what’s the big deal?” Akko evaded. She hadn’t really thought about Diana getting suspicious about the Rod when she was using a clearly-functioning artifact to cast a spell, despite having made it look useless earlier that very day. She’d been too concerned about the Papililiodya getting blasted.
“If your magic stopped working right, wouldn’t you want to know why?” Sucy pointed out, unhelpfully. Though, in fairness, Diana hadn’t looked like she was buying it.
“Precisely my motivation.” Diana agreed. “So if you wouldn’t mind illuminating me on why the Check malfunctioned in your presence?” she pressed.
Akko didn’t have any excuses prepared, which gave her few options. Just as she was contemplating a LOAD to try and avoid Diana, Undyne dashed over from past Diana, Toriel in hot pursuit. “You should’ve told me this place was so huge! I got lost trying to find you, and I never get lost!” She explained, seeming personally affronted by the building’s confusing internal structure.
Centuries of enchantments, secret passages, and simple remodeling by progressive/eccentric headmistresses, or conservative ones who were trying to restore the original/previous form of the school, from the founding of the school roughly 1600 years ago had given it an incredibly confusing interior. The fact that it was in a pocket dimension and was nearly inaccessible to those lacking in magic or highly specialized dimension-hopping technology, the latter of which was only really available in the last decade and every example was a custom piece, was all that saved it from the Witch hunts of the 1700-1800s.
Toriel took one look at Diana and said. “Oh dear, you seem very stressed. Have you been taking proper care of yourself? You seem like you’ve been focusing too much on your studies and not enough on enjoying yourself.” Her ‘mom’ instincts were going off like alarm bells. Strange, although Toriel hadn’t seemed to notice the frequency that this was the case (which was probably because their reactions were usually fairly subdued to the show of motherly affection and Akko took a cue from Gramps and worked to shield people around her from harsh/harmful/dangerous truths), that usually only happened to people who had neglectful parents or who were missing theirs. ...Oh. That would explain why she was so stuck-up, she was either putting up a front, trying to live up to some kind of promise she’d made to her parents, if only in her own mind, or both. Still, while she didn’t know for sure either way, it wasn’t her place to pry. What was she supposed to do? Ask if Diana’s parents were still alive?
Diana stiffened. “I’ll… speak to you about this more later.” she said with a distinct edge to her voice, as she turned around and left.
“What did I say?” Toriel asked, confused as to why her questions had made Diana withdraw. If Akko’s theory was correct, then Diana might be unused to properly motherly affection. An actual hug might have made her shut down, if a few sentences did this. Either it was a deeply felt, and potentially fairly recent, loss, or Diana was entirely unused to this sort of motherly affection, which said unpleasant things about her current home life.
Surprisingly, there hadn’t been any real trouble that day besides that confrontation, though Akko had the firm impression something was on the horizon. While nothing appeared to be happening on Earth Prime, save a minor zombie outbreak yesterday, which was of the slow-moving, normally-decaying type which easily contained even before she rewound time to before it happened to give Mr. Fury a heads-up, she suspected something nasty was brewing on another Earth. She’d gained good instincts for this sort of thing over the… she wasn’t sure how long she’d had RESET for in terms of how much time she’d rewound, but it was a long time. Besides, the first timeline had gotten a few months ahead of this point, and while quite a few events had played out differently because of Monsters being freed alone, she was sure something had happened around this point. Unfortunately she hadn’t been paying much attention to the dates or the news, as she hadn’t particularly expected to need to know them as she hadn’t expected to use RESET ever again at the time, so she had little idea of what it was beyond a few comments from people around her about something happening on the World of Twelve. Still, nothing major was happening at the moment, so now, a week after the Papililiodya incident, she was practicing with her magic. Specifically, with her wand.
She figured she ought to get used to it if she was going to be a Witch, plus it was a decent magical focus, which wasn’t common without being Trait-specific. While it took a few tries to get working right, a downside of not being designed for a specific Trait, she found that channeling all of the various Color Magics through it worked just fine. She’d use it for now, but she didn’t want it to become a crutch, so as soon as she had decent enough control with it to reliably not destroy anything she was using Blue Magic on, she’d work on it without the wand, though she could probably use the others with the support the wand gave her, she’d rather not risk SOUL-damage.
Yellow Magic was rarely useful outside combat situations, save for more precise Checks, which allowed Sans to see someone’s EXP and LV outside a FIGHT, but Check wasn’t exactly subtle, so she couldn’t really practice with that without practice dummies/sparring partners, and Purple Magic was basically Red Magic only with less direct power and more unusual angles of attack, the difference between a rogue and a warrior, which meant she could use Red Magic for almost everything she’d use Purple Magic for, and Red Magic was easily her strong suit. She couldn’t really use Cyan Magic, as Patience was decidedly not her strong suit, she didn’t have a strong desire to seek retribution for wrongs committed by anybody, so her Yellow Magic wasn’t the strongest, and with RESET, her Bravery wasn’t really as strong as someone in equivalent situations without it might possess, as she had relatively little to fear unless facing someone willing to torture her horrifically in a place she couldn’t escape, such as Omega Flowey, or someone who she could only hope to talk down and not to actually defeat, like Asriel with what he’d claimed and likely believed to be the equivalent of 7 human SOULs (Although by her math, the amount of power he’d gained was more like 14 human SOULs instead of the 10 it should have functioned as since the combined population of the Underground plus 6 human SOULs was equivalent to 11. While he needed 7 of them to regain his Asriel form, only one of them was occupied keeping him there during the battle. Gramps had explained it was because multiple SOULs, regardless of origin, had synergistic effects, though it wasn’t really noticeable below a few thousand unless the SOULs were stupidly powerful.), not in terms of a strong enough personality trait to qualify as a SOUL Trait at least. This limited her use of Orange Magic as well. She had an acquired resistance to pain from more deaths, some of them still-causing nightmares, than she could count, and her DT let her continue despite debilitating injuries, poison, or illness, but that was more raw willpower backed by literally forcing reality to conform to her desires than bravery, in the sense of fighting in spite of one’s fear, though her ability to resist pain and other forms of coercion let her use it to some degree.
For now, Akko was, very carefully, moving the books she’d pulled out of the shelves back to their original resting places with Blue Magic. While she’d SAVEd immediately beforehand, she didn’t want to abuse RESET, and it would defeat the purpose of this exercise if she simply used her almost literal undo button to force the universe to comply with her wishes by, well, force, every time something happened that she didn’t like. She had more than enough power, as evidenced by 999 HP and 99 DEF (though her ATK fluctuated wildly with her mood) without the bonuses from her equipment (35 DEF, 25 ATK, 1 HP regenerated every 5 seconds, and a few seconds of invulnerability when damage was inflicted, assuming she didn’t have time to grab extra equipment. Though if she gave Chara control, it was 109 ATK and 119 DEF because the Knife and Locket meant so much more to her.), she needed better control now.
She was sure a ton of spells were more about finesse than the amount of mana you could dump into them, especially in the current era of low quantities of mana on Earth. Earth Prime was okay, if declining at a slow but noticeable rate, but the World of Twelve and Supernatural Earth were the only ones doing significantly better. The others were so badly off that there was barely any magic left, most of what they had leaking from Prime, though a couple had work-arounds. While raw DT could substitute, using simple reality-warping in place of actual magical energy, most people didn’t have DT as a dominant trait like her, limiting how useful this ability was since they couldn’t use it for more powerful spells, generally using it to boost the potency of their existing mana. Even those who did have DT as their dominant Trait had distinct upper limits to the spells they could cast using it, usually fairly minor ones.
Anyway, she needed to work on her skill at using her power, to be more like Sans or Papyrus, basically. Sans had low reserves, as a consequence of his lack of regular practice, though it wasn’t as bad these days since the Monsters had undergone regular exercises to acclimate to the surface’s lower mana levels as one would with higher elevations, in addition to his generally low Stats, other than SPD. He compensated with sheer skill, and he outdid even Asgore there if one counted by lethality instead of general skill, though the younger brother was more skilled in general and probably the stronger combatant overall, by simple virtue of a) taking much longer to wear out, and b) simply having much higher Stats and therefore far more powerful attacks. Of course, Papyrus simply couldn’t work up any real intent to harm, and thus couldn’t really hurt people with his magic by comparison, which made it something of a moot point. Though he was easily superior in terms of non-lethal combat, able to take off fractions of an HP if he felt it necessary. Considering Sans’ 1 HP, and the brothers’ closeness, this made sense.
She was about halfway done reshelving when a familiar voice asked “Miss Kagari?” and Akko turned to see…
“Huh, not Chariot.” she muttered. She hadn’t noticed the first time they’d met because of the hurry she was in, but it was strange. Miss Ursula sounded exactly like her, but she had glasses and blue hair. Akko would recognize hair dye after all the times she’d seen some politician or their families with the stuff, and Chariot had red hair, though she could certainly have grown her hair out, and she’d met people who wore glasses because they liked the look, but why would Chariot be wearing a disguise instead of just living in hiding? Besides, what would she be doing teaching at this stuffy school? Wasn’t this the most likely place for her to get discovered with all the magical mishaps that happened on a regular basis assuming she’d used magic to disguise herself?
Ursula’s forehead broke out in a nervous sweat, which her hat luckily hid. “No, just me, Professor Ursula. I’m your guidance coach remember?” she asked. “Though I also teach Astronomy.” she added.
“Wait, mages use that for divinations right?” Akko asked. She didn’t actually need a refresher, having been made very familiar with the various types of future-sight by Gramps, but she could tell the subject bothered the teacher. Note to self, avoid talking about Chariot unless relevant to subject at hand around Ursula.
“Yes. It’s a second-year class though.” Apparently divination was taxing, since there was so much interference from the distorted downward dimensional counterpart of the Realm of Magic (not that most people knew about it), and the number of universes directly connected to Earth Prime didn’t help at all with things being unclear. It was possible to brute-force it to some degree, but it wasn’t exactly cheap energy-wise to begin with, and seeing further in the future was exponentially more draining and less accurate. It was simply too much for too little most of the time unless you could throw around anti-city blasts like candy as Gramps could, and even he had trouble seeing more than a few weeks into the future reliably.
“Oh yeah, sorry for blowing you off on my first day. Papiliodya only show up once a century, you know?” Akko had been a bit preoccupied with what would ordinarily be a once-in-a-lifetime view, though she’d taken some pictures and Sans had recorded a lot of the butterflies’ initial flight on his phone, on the first day, and, to be fair, Ursula hadn’t actually told her where they were meeting up. She didn’t really know anyone here besides her roommates, who didn’t know either, and she wasn’t going to ask Barbara, Hannah, or Diana.
The former because, to be frank, she expected them to be huge jerks about it, because even though whatever Papyrus had talked to them about seemed to have resolved some kind of issue between them, they hadn’t improved much towards other people, and the latter because she didn’t really want to ask anything of her after the first timeline. Also, she’d been acting like Akko was hiding something before she’d run off to avoid Toriel. She was, but that wasn’t Diana’s business, so she was avoiding the taller girl. The other teachers, well, she kind of got the impression that most of them disliked her, plus she didn’t really know most of them beyond the basics like their names.
“That’s fine. I’m actually here to give you your official school broom-” as the professor started to hand her the broom in her right hand, she was startled to see it turn blue, then teleport into Akko’s hands. Emotional highs did make magic easier.
“So cool!” she squealed, with stars in her eyes. She’d always wanted to fly! It was why she got on the roof when she was little! A Check revealed: *School-issue broom. Enables flight, having been enchanted to handle extreme acceleration and similar forces, though much like a brick wall it is much weaker on the side. Doesn’t have any precautions against falling either.*
“Uh, I also wanted to ask you about that display with the statue a few days ago.” Ursula asked, a little awkwardly. Strange, her own Check hadn’t had the bits about the wall or falling, and Akko’s dominant trait was Determination, not Justice.
“I found Shiny Chariot’s rod in the forest, and I’m planning to give it back when I find her. It probably only works when I need it or something. I’m sure it’s hers.” Akko stated. “Lotte said I should turn it in, but I’d rather give it to Chariot myself. I’m sure I’ll run into her if I just hang onto it.” she explained. It was unlikely Ursula would believe her. She’d probably just assume Akko was in denial, and trying to pretend that she’d been convinced that the Rod was a fake would only make her look more suspicious, especially with how bad a liar she was.
“Uh, well, I’m sure you’ll... meet up with her if you hang onto it.” Ursula was very clearly uncomfortable with the topic. Some kind of bad experience with a personal hero maybe? Or even Chariot herself? “Fate… or magic, or... something, will bring you together if you-”
Akko cut her off, as she was clearly not enjoying the conversation at all. “Hey, is flying really the best thing ever? Tsunderplane took me up once, but a plane isn’t really the same as a broom. This is how a real Witch flies.” she nodded as if she’d given out a piece of great wisdom. “By the way, should I write my name on mine, or am I not allowed to do that?” she asked. Nothing distracted people like acting clueless.
“Uh, no, you’re not allowed.” Ursula smiled awkwardly.
Akko shrugged. “Alright. I’ll go find the others while we wait for flying class to start.” she said, before running out the door. She was pretty clearly not helping.
“...” Ursula left, lost in old memories.
Akko, Sucy, and Lotte were sitting in the main building’s inner courtyard, as class wasn’t starting for another 20 minutes. Akko, ironically, made racecar noises as she pretended to fly on her broom.
“Akko, don’t you think you should save your energy for the actual lesson?” Lotte asked, eyes instinctively following the moving object, like a cat.
Akko had never actually flown under her own power before, so she was practically vibrating in anticipation. “But aren’t you guys excited? We’re going to fly! People have wanted to do that ever since they saw birds doing it!” she said excitedly, stars in her eyes. Which usually meant a severe case of jealousy towards them in early civilizations, when they weren’t worshipped. “I got a bunch of scars when I was little from trying to fly. Tumbling down a hill, falling off the roof, and falling out of a tree, for starters.” She gestured to a spot on her left knee, one on her right elbow, and tapped a her right ankle, while counting with her other hand, which was somewhat awkward because she was holding her broom with it. “You can’t really tell because Monster Food fixes normal scars, but I had them!” Ones caused by things involving the shattering of space-time were the exception, as conceptual damage was a bit beyond Monster food and Green Magic that wasn’t incredibly potent, such as that which required using multiple human SOULs or equivalent power. RESET generally worked just fine, though she wasn’t sure that would be true if she was the target. Hence Undyne’s missing eye not being fixed until Gramps did her a favor. Core shard shrapnel would do that.
“You can’t fly reliably unless you have a Sorcerer’s Stone, or you’re on a Leyline, and even that’s more likely to extend the time you can fly on your own than give you long-term flight. Flying eats through magic a lot faster than most people can recharge on their own. It’s technically possible, but a jetpack is a more reliable method of flight unless you have an external source of magic.” Sucy explained. Considering the kind of energy flying burned, it made sense that it would be magic-intensive. Levitation was much the same, and was relegated to truly potent mages and/or those with direct links to the Realm of Magic, or at least environments extremely rich in mana.
Jetpacks for the common man, instead of the genius inventor, were a very recent invention, as Professor Membrane (taking some cues from Jimmy and Dexter’s work) wanted to make Zero-G construction easier, since a Stellar Bellows was finally under construction in the Sol systems of all space-capable Earths now that there was actually some infrastructure (large shipyards designed by collaborative effort of the very best engineers across the multitude of Earths, though they could build system defenses and smaller shipyards in addition to ships, getting a sizeable workforce up there in the first place, having to rotate them, building up to their current gargantuan size by combining many smaller shipyard to progressively larger sizes and having those shipyards build smaller shipyards to combine, rinsing and repeating being what took so long) from Earth’s orbit and inward, as a general rule, to take advantage of the resources of one. Before, it had been put off because less than 1% of the projected resources of one could actually be put to use, but now there were projects in the works to consume them, in addition to the plans for a stupidly massive amount of system defenses.
The frequency with which one or more Earths were threatened by something potentially world-ending, and/or an alien invasion, meant that Arcologies to potentially hold an entire other planet’s population were a necessity to have any hope of dealing with a flood of refugees like that, as Ogrest’ Chaos had once caused approximately two hundred years ago, and Torus platforms of the defense-focused Safehold design, to serve as stupidly potent defenses for the planet below, were in the process of construction both around Earth and around the functional colonies, with plans in the works for the rest of the Sol system once it was in a colonizable shape, as people were well and truly fed up with alien overlords seeking to take over the planet, and there was always the fear that a zombie virus wouldn’t burn itself out or would break containment before a cure could be found one of these days. They kept getting nastier, what with that semi-intangible type from about 5 years ago.
“Well, I know that now, but I was 6 then. I figured out I was doing it wrong and tried looking it up on the internet, but all I found was bunch of occult rituals which I was smart enough not to use because of all the stories about horrible things happening to people who used them..” Except for that one time, since there weren’t any bad stories about it, and it was more than 20 years old, so she’d figured it was safe. She’d been very, very wrong, but she first met Gramps in the incident’s aftermath, so there was that. Although they had a poor relationship for a while afterward, it got better after the end of the first timeline. “So I decided not to use the Internet any more. Until I was 9 anyway.” It was a very traumatic time.
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After the pair stared at her with disturbed expressions for a few seconds, as she proceeded to cheerfully return to pretending to fly while making racecar noises, even if her heart was a little less in it now, Sucy queried “Shouldn’t you be making airplane noises?” to try and put that particular landmine out of her mind.
“I have more experience with Papyrus’ car than with planes.” she answered. Tsunderplane wasn’t much like real planes either, further distorting her view of them.
“Papyrus has a car?” Lotte asked. Surprisingly, that hadn’t come up during their visit, in favor of the stories of some of her escapades with Milo, Phineas and co, and the KND, or several at a time a few times. She liked to keep in contact with the various heroes of the various Earths. Partially because she felt she owed them, and partially because she simply liked to keep an eye on important people, which she’d picked up from Gramps and… other people, both in general, and especially in the original timeline. She’d even loaned out RESET to a few people who remembered RESETs other than TRUE RESETs, including Medic.
She was the one who recommended the members of RED for bodyguard duty of the scientists (Spy and Scout with Wakeman, Heavy and Medic with Utonium, and Engineer and Pyro with Membrane, with Demoman, Sniper and Soldier rotating between the groups in varied numbers depending on how active the various threats in the general area of their charges were, though at least one of them was usually with Sumdac, who was targeted less often and had a number of robots less potent than Jenny capable of dealing with most of the things he did encounter) after Mann Co came apart from the strain of constantly fighting Gray Mann’s empire under Saxton’s less-than-strategically-minded leadership over on Quarantine Earth (thanks to her scissors letting her bypass the quarantine). and got themselves doing any job they could get their hands on since the 1970’s. For all their quirks and friendliness off-duty, they were incredibly dangerous on the job, with an Ubercharged Heavy able to hurt some of the smaller kaijuu.
“Yeah, he’s always been a fan of racecars, so he got a convertible as soon as he could. Since the Monsters lived underground they had a lot of gold compared to the average human. Since it was useless for anything besides high-end electronics, because gold is pretty much the softest metal there is, they made it the money they used. Trees didn’t grow very well down there, so they weren’t willing to use paper money.” Funnily enough, the US economy had actually benefited somewhat from the injection of solid assets. Although the world economy as a whole hadn’t really been affected very much.
A few minutes later, they were over by the school’s track. Where a normal school would use this for running, this one used it to delineate loops for flying laps. It was a bit more complicated than running laps, as you had to keep an eye on three dimensions instead of two, but nothing she couldn’t handle once she got used to it. The equations behind teleportation were much, much worse.
With the students lined up in front of her, and the bell ringing in the background, Professor Nelson began to speak with a noticeable Boston accent. “Alright, flying class is in session. I’ll be working with the new students to get you lot up to speed on the basics. Everyone else, work on acceleration.” she ordered.
The majority of the class cast the flight spell and rose into the air, almost in unison. It was very impressive to watch. “New students!” The professor called. “Ovah here!” Akko and Sucy walked over. Apparently Sucy was relatively new to the greater Witch community as well.
“Flight magic’s a classic, in the last thousand years it’s been simplified to the point even kids can learn it, and it’s one of the most basic spells in a Witch’s skillset, but it’s also one of the most dangerous ones that we teach new students. This is probably the most likely place for you to get hurt on school grounds if you’re not careful.” The teacher explained seriously, to nods from the girls. “First, grab hold of your broom. Firmly, but not so tight your hands start achin’, or else your hands are gonna get tired and you could fall.” The teacher explained seriously. Akko nodded and placed her broom squarely in front of herself, doing her best not to keep her broom in a deathgrip. Sucy, more calm, was a little slower, but had no such problem with her grip, that was in part due to slightly greater experience with a broom, which wasn’t saying much, though a bar on the ground was still a bar.
“Next, pay respect to the broom. The magic soaking into these things doesn’t give ‘em minds like us, but they’ve got opinions on things, and nobody likes being disrespected.” she continued. Akko saluted her broom, while Sucy merely gave it a nod. “Now, get on, and say the spell to lift off!” she hopped onto her broom and wordlessly lift off. Once you were familiar enough with a spell, you didn’t actually need to say it’s incantation, though it was more taxing.
The girls copied the teacher. “Tia Freyre.” Sucy enunciated clearly, floating upwards without trouble. While her uniform reached to the ground, as Akko’s was much shorter than average to minimize loss of mobility, somehow it was no obstacle to seating herself on the broom.
Akko’s excitement proved her downfall. “Tia Freyle!” she blinked. “Wait a sec-” Her broom cannoned to the left, smashing her into a nearby copse of trees. Luckily she broke the impact with her body, so her broom didn’t break.
5
She intentionally hid her HP bar as soon as she stopped moving. “I’m okay! I just mispronounced the spell!” she called, standing up and brushing off her uniform. She’d be back to full HP in less than 30 seconds anyway, so what did it matter? Technically that wasn’t a backfire, merely a miscast. The distinction was sometimes subtle, but it basically amounted to the magic lashing out at the caster and/or anything near them when a spell backfired, and a miscast was when the spell worked, but not as intended, such as your broom abruptly flying off in a random direction.
As she walked back over, the other students went back to what they were doing when no obvious signs of injury made themselves known, though the teacher gave her a closer look before clearing her to try again. While it was difficult to see from the field, she’d carved a big chunk of a tree out with her body, and she was concerned because she was fairly certain it hadn’t been leaning like that before. It wouldn’t hit the field even if it fell in a very odd direction relative to it’s missing hunk, but it would provide evidence of her sheer toughness. She kept her real power under wraps to avoid overt scrutiny of her SOUL or life, which could only cause problems.
Akko paused as a joyous laugh made itself known. She looked up to see a tall orange-and-red-haired girl flying a broom with amazing grace and acrobatic skill. “Amanda! How many times do I gotta tell you no broom acrobatics?!” Professor Nelson yelled harshly at the girl’s standing on her broom as it flew.
Amanda lay back on her broom in a manner reminiscent of Sans on his hammock. “Party pooper.” she muttered.
“I can hear you from there!” A mildly annoyed note entered the teacher’s voice.
As Akko managed to get herself flying with the proper incantation, if jerkily because she was trying very hard to not to smash into anything, she heard a whooshing noise from to the side. It sounded straighter than Amanda’s had, though turning to see Diana’s broom making the Road Runner’s skidding noise while stopping was an odd juxtaposition with her serious expression.
“8.01 seconds! That’s a new personal best!” Barbara remarked happily, looking up from the stopwatch she’d timed the taller girl with. Diana said nothing, merely adjusting her hair, which had fallen into her field of vision from the abrupt stop.
“She’s going to a favorite in the races for sure.” the teacher remarked.
Akko shrugged and kept trying to get her broom flying at a measured pace, instead of in fits and starts. A few minutes later, Hannah and Barbara pulled up alongside her. “Wow, you’re kind of terrible at this aren’t you?” Hanna jabbed as Akko’s broom juddered forward.
“It’s like you’ve never ridden a broom before.” Barbara agreed.
“Well, I actually haven’t ridden a broom very often, so it’s not really that bad.” This being the first time she’d flown a broom, she thought she was doing pretty well.
“Hm, so…” A sly grin made itself known on their faces. “You could use training wheels then.” Hanah concluded.
“Wait, how are those even a thing for brooms? Wouldn’t it be training wings or something? I mean I’m in the air so-” Akko began to question.
She was answered by Barbara casting “Oruihon Deance!” and a sphere of mana circled Akko’s broom, before making it transform into a toy car, which was pretty obviously intended as mockery, considering Barabara mostly just attached shoddy car parts to the broom to make it look like a trike. Turning her hat into a bike helmet was admittedly a nice touch, though she didn’t appreciate the laughter at her expense.
Akko gave them a deadpan look, and tapped the broom with her wand. With a cloud of grey smoke similar to the original transformation, it changed back. “Papyrus taught me how to undo effects like this ages ago. It’s basically picking the spell apart with magic. Sort of like a lockpick.” Well, you had to be careful, since picking a spell apart was the most likely way of causing it to backlash other than intentionally misfiring a spell, since destabilizing it was a common consequence of ripping hunks of it’s structure out. It was as much forcing certain sections apart to defuse the spell as anything else.
The difficulty of doing it was a mix of the power and complexity of the original spell. A spell like this, she’d have been able to take apart just fine 4 years ago. Something like the Leylines? She might be able to disrupt a local network if she really wanted to, but she’d probably be bedridden for next three days. Instant helmet spell was potentially useful though. Seriously, that seemed like something they should teach first, though considering how easy it was to pop the construct like a soap bubble, the spell’s utility for creating protective gear was probably limited.
“You can’t tell us it wasn’t funny.” Hannah pointed out.
“I mean, it was kind of funny, but I don’t think it was that funny.” she grouched.
Several traded barbs and 30 minutes later, she was leaning against the wall in the hallway. “It wasn’t that bad.” Lotte tried to comfort her.
“You only smashed into the treeline three times. Most people would have broken their broom by the second time.” Sucy was kind of giving her conflicting signals here. The second time she’d gotten distracted while turning. The third, the teacher yelling at Amanda again had set her off. Sudden loud noises often signaled attacks in her experience. She could normally suppress the reflex, but if she was concentrating especially hard...
“You know, I was kind of expecting riding a broom to be less temperamental since it’s such a power-hungry spell.” Akko groaned. You’d think that something simple, yet draining, would be the easiest type of spell for her to use.
“They’ve made the spell simpler, but flying’s not simple. Even birds mess up sometimes.” Lotte pointed out.
“I’ve got really good spatial relations though.” Akko countered.
“Really?” Sucy asked, pulling out one of their thinner textbooks, which she proceeded to toss in Akko’s general direction. Akko’s hand shot out and caught it in a vice grip, despite the fact that it would have fallen short of her. Getting things tossed at her had almost purely negative connotations to her.
“Really.” She deadpanned, handing Sucy her book back. Sucy was unnerved to see depressions in the cover where the book had been grabbed.
“Oh, hey, they’re practicing baton passing for the race.” Lotte gestured to the field out the window, where Witches were indeed passing batons, in an admittedly desperate attempt to get Akko’s mind off of her poor showing with her broom.
“Oh yeah, the teacher said something about Diana being a favorite for a race. What’s that about?” Akko asked. About 5 minutes later, they stood in front of a trophy case. Trophies and photographs of winning teams from the last 40 years were here, though apparently the older ones were stored in a grand trophy hall... that no one visited because everyone in it was dead a hundred years before they were born and hadn’t made the sort of mark the 9 Olde Witches had. Supposedly they’d made paintings before photographs became a thing, with it being a matter of the winning team’s preference before color photographs had arisen.
“The Luna Nova Cup Broom Relay. It’s a traditional race where teams of three people, usually roommates, compete to reach the finish line. You have to pass your baton to the next person and have them complete their leg of the race or else it doesn’t count.” Lotte explained.
“Well I guess I can’t do that. I’m a terrible flier and I’m pretty sure you guys aren’t both interested.” Akko sighed. Maybe next year?
“I’ll pass.” Sucy agreed, then groaned as she saw Akko stiffen. “I’ve known you for less than 2 weeks, and I can already tell what your body language means.” she sighed. She’d changed her mind, and she was about to start yelling about why.
“Shiny Chariot won this race!” Akko pressed her face up against the glass. “Look, there’s her photo!” she pointed. Sure enough, there was a photo of an exuberant red-haired girl about Akko’s age with red eyes of almost the exact same shade. Her teammates looked a bit perturbed by her excitement. “That settles it, I’m going to race too! I’ll get my photo put right next to hers!” Hero worship was unhealthy, but so was cake!
“But you still can’t ride a broom.” Lotte poked a hole in her plan.
“Plus the teacher said she didn’t want you practicing when she wasn’t around after you crashed so many times. You’ll never be able to practice enough to go from ‘barely fly in a straight line’ to racing material in the next few days.” Sucy helped Lotte.
“Hm, I’ll think of something.” Akko responded. While using RESET for something this trivial was a no-go, both because of what she’d inflict on those aware of the RESETs and the dangers associated with using any sort of ridiculously broken power for frivolous reasons, she was good at improvising.
“Well, I’ve got to pick up my broom from the Magic Item Cafe, so I’ll see you guys later.” Lotte stretched, briefly closing her eyes, before opening them to find Akko’s face inches from her own.
“What’s that?” It sounded cool! Also potentially useful.
“You wanna come?” Lotte asked, leaning back. Akko nodded enthusiastically.
A half hour later, they were walking through town, wearing cloaks to mark them as students. They’d had to walk after they left the Leyline Terminal. “A broom would have gotten us here faster, but I guess we’re too far from the Sorcerer’s Stone huh?” Akko asked.
“Plus students aren’t supposed to use magic off school grounds. Partly because our wands only hold so much charge and take a really long time to recharge away from the stone, and partly because it’s more dangerous to try and force magic out when you don’t have much left. Also, the teachers just don’t want us using magic unsupervised.” Lotte explained. Made sense, that was how you got bad necromancers and people who summoned… various things.
“So, what’s this Magic Item Cafe thing about?” Akko asked.
“It’s a shop that sells magic items, and you can have drinks at a little bar off on the end of the counter too. It’s always been like that supposedly, the cafe part was more of a side business for when the students were off for their breaks.” she explained. Pubs that doubled as other things were fairly common in Europe, from what some acquaintances of hers over here had said. Black markets, secret passages, and the occasional hidden hospital and/or museum were all things she’d encountered personally.
They stop in front of a gothic-colored but normally-designed building with Last Wednesday Society in an arch above the door. Akko blanches in disappointment as she sees a bunch of junk in the window. It looked neat, but from what she knew about the occult, she doubted any of it would have much significance beyond being a stuffed lizard, for example.
They walked inside, to a man tending the counter with a slightly glazed look, common to people with little better to do but wait. It left as he turned to greet them. “Oh, customers.” he sounded slightly surprised, which boded poorly for the business. “Welcome!” he said, surprisingly not forcing the cheer.
“Hi, I’m here to pick up my broom if it’s ready.” Lotte stated, pulling out a card and giving it to the shopkeeper, or teller. It was difficult to tell, and Checking was often a prelude to a FIGHT, so it was considered rude to do so without permission, which nixed that option.
The man scanned the card for a few seconds, before nodding. “Yeah, it should be. Give me a second.” he turned around and began rummaging in a side room.
“So, this is the cafe?” Akko deadpanned, pointing to a small bar area and a single table. Lott had said it was a side business, but she hadn’t quite expected it to be this extreme.
“The tea’s really good.” Lotte defended, smiling a bit at the place’s expense.
Akko moved over to a rack of potions. “Juice that turns you into a frog leg, and this one makes you into a chameleon tongue…” she moved her gaze between a pair of the potions, making a face. “Why would someone make these? If they wear off, it’s a really mean-spirited prank. If they don’t I’m pretty sure that would constitute magical assault. I don’t want to know why someone would use it on themselves.” she muttered. Ever since the incident on the island at summer camp, back when Rodney tried to freeze the world, she’d gone from zero interest in knowing about people’s weird fetishes, to negative interest.
She turned as she heard a strange rattling from a nearby cupboard. She found a red broom with a spearhead the size of her own head at the top chained up in a cage-like cupboard. “What’s with the broom?” she asked. She actually remembered it from her first run, but she’d never actually found out what it was rather than what it could do.
“It looks like a racing broom. Familiar too.” Lotte tilted her head, which was a tic Akko had learned meant she was trying to remember something, not get a better angle. She turned to a newspaper clipping, and gasped. While Akko couldn’t read the fine print, the headline stood out just fine. MYSTERIOUS FLIGHT BROOM DISCOVERED, LEGEND OF THE SHOOTING STAR, the headline of the paper and the first column almost blared, with a broom advertisement for 38 presumably British (as the photo lacked color it was safe to say the EU was after it’s time) pounds in the bottom right corner.
“That’s the legendary racing broom, Shooting Star!” she exclaimed. At Akko’s questioning look, she explained. “There’s supposed to have been a Witch who crossed the Pacific on a broom that supplied it’s own magic to fly with a long time ago. Not only did it not need the Sorcerer’s Stone, but it was so fast that it looked like a shooting star. According to rumor at least.”
“Wow. That’s really cool, but it seems not to like being locked up. Professor Nelson said that the magic soaking into the brooms made them develop opinions on things. Do you think this broom can think after flying around with that much magic?” she asked.
“Basically.” The teller said, walking over with Lotte’s broom, which he handed off as he continued. “Of course, this thing keeps going even if you fall off, so it’s way too dangerous for anybody to ride. That’s why it’s locked up and chained up on top of that. The boss wouldn’t be happy if it got out, but nobody’s been dumb enough to try and ride a broom this rowdy.”
Akko opened her mouth, and he waved her off. “Sorry kid, you can’t borrow it. This thing’s gonna take off the second it gets free, and it ain’t comin’ back. Not that you couldn’t handle it but… actually yeah. I don’t know you, so that’s exactly the problem.” he pointed out.
“But I can’t ride a broom properly, and there’s no way I can learn in time for the race.” Akko attempted to counter, though she realized he wasn’t going for it before she even finished.
“Guess Diana’s gonna win this year then, but hey, there’s always next year.” he shrugged.
Meanwhile, Amanda leaned up against a nearby wall, hidden from their view by virtue of being around the corner. “The legendary broom huh…” she grinned in anticipation. Akko glanced over, but by the time she’d walked over to Check, Amanda was long gone to get some supplies for her heist.
“Something the matter?” the teller asked.
“I was sure I heard somebody.” Akko said, before turning to Lotte. “Want to go find a spot to do the thing?”
“Thing?” Lotte asked, before comprehension forced confusion aside. “Won’t Sucy want to see?”
“Well, I’m not convinced she’s all that interested, and anyway, you want to see it more right? By the time we get to school, find Sucy, and get back, it’ll be dark out.” Akko reasoned. Lotte hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
Before they went back to school, Akko found an isolated, but nature-filled spot not far from town. “Uh, do I look okay?” Lotte asked nervously.
“Lotte, Earth-chan was around for the caveman, you’d have to go pretty far out of your way to look good or bad enough for her to care.” Akko pointed out.
“Uh, yeah I guess that makes sense.” Lotte agreed, fiddling with her hands from nerves.
“Are you sure you want to? We could always do this next time we’re in town.” Akko faltered at Lotte’s second thoughts.
“No… no, just… give me a minute.” Lotte took a deep breath to calm down, and then nodded.
“Okay, time to meet Earth-chan.” she pulled out her phone, and pressed the planet icon. She’d probably need a different phone with a general world-spirit call whenever the colonies made world-spirits emerge on the other celestial bodies humanity had a presence on, but for now this worked for whichever Earth she was on.
A mound of dirt rose up, and, upon reaching roughly the same height as Lotte, shook off the outer layer, revealing what appeared to be a girl about their age, with a white shirt, brown shorts, and short hair. Two things slammed home the fact that she wasn’t human. First, her hair was actually a globe of sorts, the blue sections actually flowing like water. Second, there was a heaviness to her presence, like a pillar of rock that could come crashing down, or the distinct sense that you were in avalanche country. “HELLO.” she cleared her throat. “Hey Akko. What’s up?” she asked, no care whatsoever for the borderline reverent look on Lotte’s face giving way to shock.
“I wanted you to meet my friend Lotte. She’s a spirit-talker, and she wanted to meet you really badly.” Akko explained.
“Hey there. Sorry, not what you expected right?” At Lotte’s stuttered denials, she smiled. “Yeah, letting myself go full ‘Will of the Earth’ mode tends to get worship or bleeding orifices, usually both.” She gave a sidelong glance into the distance, probably Gramps general direction. The two were close, mostly because they were both effectively immortal. “So I do my level best to suppress that and your perception of me is affected by that, so it seems like I’m talking more like a normal person to you, even though what your ears are getting is a mix of me mimicking human vocal chords with very fine geokinesis and a constant stream of memes and ideas that your brain is doing it’s best to translate into something coherent. Push it too hard and… bad things happen.”
After that explanation, she and Lotte began to talk, Earth-chan’s casual demeanor swiftly breaking the ice, and once Lotte got over her nerves they quickly fell into a conversation about the specifics of spirit manifestation. Any and all of the spirits Lotte had encountered up to that point were tiny fragments of Earth-chan herself, which meant that she was technically calling on avatars of a greater entity, sort of like how divine spellcasting worked in most stories. Akko suspected being on terms with Earth-chan of even a recent acquaintance would give her a massive power-up, at least while on Earth.
Much like a human did the regulation of their breathing and similar processes, Earth-chan handled most of these requests subconsciously. This meant that a malevolent spirit-caller was less likely to be able to call up a greater spirit, because anything major was kicked up to the conscious mind, and generally received a resounding no. Lotte, on the other hand, would likely receive some favoritism because of her good first impression.
RESET interacted with Earth-chan oddly, sometimes she remembered, sometimes she didn’t. While technically the second-most Determined being in the universe, since she had roughly 1.35 billion times the average human’s Determination, it was so spread out across thousands and thousands of cubic miles that she barely ever managed to muster enough to do much of anything to the space-time continuum with it actively unless faced with an existential threat, which was the sort of situation DT was at its strongest in. She could Refuse destructive attacks that would utterly annihilate even her counterpart Earths, and provide major power boosts, but she was not a valid candidate for RESET, as she was not a quite alive in the sense that even Flowey was. Technically speaking, Earth-chan was an inanimate object with a collective consciousness, just on a larger scale than usual. It was more complicated than that, and more metaphysical, but that was the gist.
It boiled down to the fact that Earth-chan was like if the blood spilled from every wound ever inflicted upon humankind became part of a hive mind and gained sentience. This pseudo-existence left her drowsy until relatively recently, about the time of the Industrial Revolution, when the human population, and the number of deaths, skyrocketed. With the massive increase in DT all at once, she was able to fully rouse herself. It was for this reason that the World of Twelve’s planet, as well as the relatively inaccessible Earths, were very sleepy by the standards of the others, as the other world-spirits of the Sol System likely would be.
Akko was self-aware enough to admit that making Lotte stronger for her sake was superseded by simply not wanting to have to LOAD a friend’s death away again. She carefully schooled her features as this thought made itself known while Lotte actually giggled at something Earth-chan said. She was pretty sure that glance Earth-chan had sent her was knowing too, but Lotte didn’t need to know. People always got nervous when they found out Akko was a doom magnet, and she was sick of being treated like a bomb about to go off. Not to mention that was a can of worms she definitely didn’t want to open.
*** Approximately Half An Hour Later ***
Later, when they made it back to school, Akko grumbled to herself as she made her way back to the dorm. “Okay, so I’m not getting a self-flying broom, because stealing stuff like that never ends well, and I can’t borrow it. Which means I’ve gotta learn to ride a broom by the race, which is in the next couple days.” She barely kept herself from shouting, before sighing. “But how?”
“I might be able to help.” Akko jumped as Professor Ursula showed up behind her. “I’ve talked to Professor Nelson, and I can vouch for your safety so you can practice with your broom, but I’ll need to know your Stats in detail. HP in particular.” she explained.
Akko thought it over for a moment. On one hand, she’d prefer as few people as possible knew how nutty her Stats were, since it raised a lot of questions she had trouble answering the follow-ups to. On the other hand, her abilities being known to at least one member of the faculty would simplify things a great deal whenever some kind of crisis popped up. Everybody knew some kind of world-ending event would happen sooner or later, as the Toruses were of little help against home-grown menaces, for all that even 4 of the Eden types would make the average alien fleet dash itself against the rocks. ‘The problem with hiding how strong you are is that your own allies also underestimate you.’ as Gramps put it. “Just, uh, keep it to yourself okay?” she asked, the world turning monochrome as a Fight was initiated. A familiar box and 4 buttons appeared. Since Akkko was the stronger SOUL, she went first, but Mercy let her skip her Turn. Ursula used Check, and gasped.
*Atsuko Kagari.
999/999 HP.
25 ATK. 134 DEF. High SPD.
Easily placated, but dangerous when provoked. Difficult to provoke, luckily.*
“Uh, yeah, I don’t want to go into all the whys or the nitty-gritty right now, but I’ve been training really hard to get strong magic ever since the Monsters got free, partly because it was really weak at first, and with tutors like I had, I got strong fast. I kinda overfocused on combat training though, and I guess I’m paying for it now.” Akko gave a bare-bones explanation to appease the teacher’s obvious and understandable curiosity, though she looked guilty for some reason. What was going on with her?
“I’ll… tell them you’re over 100. They’ll let you ride with that. Everybody’s got secrets.” Ursula nodded slowly.
Akko blinked, she’d expected that to be harder but- Yeah, she owed the teacher the benefit of the doubt at this point. Like she said, everybody had secrets. As long as it didn’t put people in danger, it wasn’t her business. “Thanks.” she sagged slightly in relief as the FIGHT ended, neither of them actually interested in fighting.
There was a short awkward silence where both parties could tell the other wanted to ask about the other, but didn’t want to dig into secrets they’d indicated having themselves, before the Professor reached into her bag. “Oh, uh, here. This is for beginning fliers. I think you should read it while I go get you permission to practice.” Ursula pulled out what was clearly a children’s book. MY FIRST BROOM RIDE in big, colorful, balloon-like letters (and a picture of a little kid on a broom with a rainbow behind them) took up nearly the whole cover. A spiked bubble on the bottom corner, the only large spot unoccupied by the title itself, proclaimed that it was fun and easy. Well, one of those was true. “It might look childish, but since you don’t have much experience, I think it’s best if you start from the basics and-”
“Gonna study hard! Thanks!” Akko yelled as she sped down the hallway to retrieve her broom.
*Akko fled.* The narration helpfully informed Ursula. “Um, okay then. I’ll see you around?” she asked no one, a bit bewildered by the sudden exit.
A few minutes later, Akko was sitting on a bench outside, with her broom leaning against her, and the book on her lap. “Okay, the book sa-” “Hello Akko.” Asgore said from the other bench, sipping some tea. He’d become something of a connoisseur of the different blends, since tea was kind of hard to come by underground. Flowey’s pot was nearby, and presumably he’d swiftly burrowed into the ground so Sans, and by extension Akko, would be technically telling the truth about not snooping around if anyone asked. Akko trusted him to be careful and not to kill anyone, and hey, his snooping might find something she’d have to deal with, like that thing from Sleepy Peak. Hopefully she wouldn’t need to call in Gramps this time though.
“Oh, hi Asgore.” Akko paused her reading and parsed what she’d just said. “Wait, when did you get here? I didn’t see Sans or hear him teleport.”
“A few minutes ago. Sans had a hunch you’d be running around a great deal today.” Or rather, Gaster was keeping an eye on her because she’d voluntarily stuck his old pocketwatch in her Inventory so he could do just that as a peace offering and he’d told Sans. Not that Asgore knew about that. “What have you got there?” he asked.
“I’ve been having trouble flying, so the Astronomy teacher gave me a book on the basics. It says that brooms love to be cleaned with, and that you need to show them who's the boss, kind of like a dog-dog.” When the Canine Unit was a thing, that distinction was important.
“Yes, I remember being quite surprised when the human mages hopped onto wooden sticks in order to fly, since they didn’t feel comfortable having the magic coming straight out of them like one of the rockets they have these days. Not as fast, but a lot safer.” Asgore noted. He’d had little to do once the governmental reforms went through, which didn’t take long since he was the king, and Alphys took care of most of the technological side of things. Not on a regular basis at least, so he’d had a look at the mechanics of various magics the citizens used and worked on education reform thereof. “Of course, these days they have to use the brooms, so I suppose it’s something of a moot point.” he admitted.
Akko nodded and skimmed the book’s first few pages one more time. “Alright then, I guess I’ll start with sweeping, and move down the list.” She started sweeping the ground near the bench. “What a good broom you are.” she cooed at it in a sickly sweet tone. “Hm, Professor Ursula said she’d talk to the teachers about my riding a broom without supervision, but she probably hasn’t done it yet.” Akko muttered, still sweeping. “So I probably shouldn’t try to fly just yet.” she admitted.
“If you’re asking my advice, then don’t do anything rash. It almost never ends well.” Asgore offered.
“...Hey Akko, who’s this?” Sucy asked, as Lotte was still on Cloud 9 from speaking with the personification of Earth, and wasn’t really paying attention.
Akko grinned and made a makeshift trumpet with her hands. “Asgore, the king of the Monsters.” Akko proclaimed, making a classic fake trumpet noise.
“Well, I’ve lost a lot of authority as far as other nations are concerned, after the… methods used to break the Barrier, so Akko here’s ended up picking up the slack.” Asgore admitted. He definitely hadn’t gotten over it, but he didn’t flinch whenever the subject came up any more. Progress. The tone of his voice snapped Lotte out of it.
“Having a 10-year-old be a foreign ambassador seems weird though.” Sucy pointed out.
“Well, Akko’s pretty capable when she gets passionate about something, and I don’t begrudge the reasoning behind their problems with Monsterkind’s foreign policy being dictated by myself.” Asgore answered. “It would be extremely hypocritical of me if I did.” he added.
Toriel wasn’t really eligible either, as while the Monsters had more or less ignored her returning since she hadn’t tried to reclaim power, admitting that she didn’t really deserve the position after leaving it for so long, neither she nor Asgore, nor Akko, were sure they’d be so understanding if she tried to reclaim a her former position. The human nations, particularly America, had experience with unusual ambassadors, in part due to the frequency of crises, so while Akko taking the position was certainly balked at, there weren’t any candidates more viable, as Papyrus was most definitely not suited for politics, even more so than Akko had been before getting a lot of experience. Undyne was too easily baited, Alphys too lacking in confidence, Sans was too difficult to take seriously when he wasn’t being threatening, and the Annoying Dog was impossible to take seriously at the best of times. Akko had endured more than a few accusations of race betrayal, which she’d admit was not entirely inaccurate, as she had a higher opinion of Monsterkind than humanity, but she didn’t see why it particularly mattered. After all, more than a few of the officials she’d dealt with weren’t too fond of Monsters (non-humans in general really) either, as she’d noted just before abandoning a run gone bad several times.
“Okay, Professor Ursula is getting me permission to ride my broom without supervision, so I can drink coffee and practice all night in preparation, but I need you guys on my team or I can’t compete.” Akko pleaded.
“You know I don’t really care about this sort of thing right?” Sucy deadpanned.
“I thought you’d say that, so I looked at the race’s details, and the winner gets a prize from Professor Lukic.” Akko pulled out an application form. It wasn’t filled out yet, but it laid out the general rules of the race, including the prize.
A thoughtful look passed over Asgore’s face. “Lukic… Oh!” He had an epiphany. “She’s the Potions teacher yes?”
“Magic Pharmaceuticals, so her prize is probably something good.” A slightly creepy grin made itself known as Sucy corrected him. “Alright, I’m in.”
Akko cheered and turned a hopeful gaze to Lotte. “Well, I guess I can join too.” Lotte added with some hesitancy, to cheering and a hug from Akko. “Alright, I’ll practice all night so we can practice some baton passes tomorrow and-”
Sucy interrupted her, after examining the registration sheet. “Actually, I have a potion that should help with that. I don’t think you can learn to fly properly in one day, but the rules don’t say you need to fly. I’ll need a little while to brew enough to practice with and for the race though, so we’ll practice passing batons tomorrow.” she tossed Akko a pen and the sheet, muttering ingredients to herself as she walked off. Akko smiled as she filled out the form. This could work! She still felt like she was forgetting something though.
*** Meanwhile ***
A strange group stared at a tower, faced with a dragon and a hooded figure.
*** Akko POV ***
Eh, it was probably nothing important.