Charlie was, at the moment, yawning.
Granted, he was doing so while in a meeting and if he were a normal person doing as such might be grounds for a complaint on work ethic.
He wasn’t the only one yawning, and heck, it was his boss that was yawning with him…
But the secretary of said boss was glaring at both of them, and that scared Charlie more than the idea of being fired, if a Demigod could be fired from Aegis.
“I understand the two of you are happier running around than talking, but we really need to get this report out of the way.” Rose Cora everyone, the scariest Demigod in Charlie’s opinion.
Even if she was a century or two younger than him, Rose was scary to Charlie.
“I hate reports… besides, you were there at the Python fight a month ago, and you should have been able to guess how they’re progressing by now.” Charlie’s statement was met with a roll of the eyes by Rose.
“Of course I have an idea on how your team has grown in strength by now, but my first estimations had Ignus incapable of fighting as he was.” Rose’s words were true…
Charlie could admit that Jake was progressing quickly as a Demigod in relation to others, even given the fact that he was a child of a God who could only have one or two children.
Charlie himself had no siblings, meaning that he should have a huge amount of power when it came to the Principle’s he used, but Charlie hadn’t gained strength like Jake did.
“Uh, it might have to do with how he was introduced through combat instead of stress or simply aging into Awakening.” Edgar included, and his was the word of an expert in regards to Demigod Awakening.
Edgar himself Awoke through combat, and he was the sole child of whoever his parent was, so it would be easier to relate Jake’s growth to Edgar actually…
Edgar was the strongest Demigod alive though, so no one could really come close, even Demigods older than him struggled in a fight against him.
Charlie hadn’t won a single one of their spars after all.
“Even with all those ‘benefits’ it still doesn’t explain how Jake was capable of fighting at the level he did during the Python encounter.” Rose’s complaints were uncared for by both Charlie and Edgar, mostly because why complain if you have a strong teammate?
“Does it truly matter? Jake grows stronger faster, all Demigods do after or even during a fight in some cases. Who knows, he might even be a Favoured which would explain why every God he has faced was related to his father in some way.” Edgar added, and Charlie once more remembered that there were some things that just didn’t make sense.
Favoured would be an example of things that didn’t make sense… as far as Charlie was aware, a Favoured was essentially a real-life hero, or to put it better, main character.
A Favoured could be ‘bad’ or ‘good’ at their choosing, but the main commonalities between Favoured was a sense of charisma, growing stronger at a faster pace, and being abnormally lucky in bad situations.
In other words, plot armour.
Edgar was a confirmed Favoured, he had to be with how powerful he was, and it was suspected that each of the Council members were also Favoured.
Also, the name Favoured came from the term ‘Fate’s Favoured’. When two people of equal strength, skill and intelligence fought, the winner was the one who was more loved by ‘Fate’.
And Favoured were those who seemed to win every time, until they ran into another Favoured.
Edgar and Charlie both had another Demigod they disliked, one who was good at Divination. It was believed that this Demigod might also be a Favoured, hence why Edgar couldn’t get a clean victory.
“…If he is a Favoured, that explains a bit. We’ll list him as a possible one, but there is no way to determine a Favoured without taking time.” Rose’s complaints were valid and Charlie and Edgar both nodded in agreement.
Favoured were rare, though Demigods had a higher chance of being one, and the only way to know one is a Favoured is to use trial and error.
They were the ones who turned that ‘one per cent chance of victory’ into a definite win, so if someone survives many fights which would normally kill another in the same situation, they were considered a Favoured then.
“Okay, ignoring that you might have two Favoured on team Charlie, that report is done for now. Edgar, we still need to talk about everything else Aegis is involved in.” Edgar sighed, looking at the page in front of him listing the things needed to be known.
“Let’s see… Aegis is, as usual, making enough money to keep afloat, especially after killing Python and considering the businesses we run.” Edgar said, recalling that the children of nature Gods were attempting to reverse global warming and that was getting them quite a bit of money.
“As to the Council, we haven’t received a challenge this last month, the current iteration of the Council is being considered the strongest ever…” Edgar seemed a bit awkward saying that last bit, and Charlie understood Edgar’s pain.
The Council was meant to consist of the strongest Demigods and heads of Aegis, but there was a Demigod or two that didn’t want to be involved there.
The leader of Team Epsilon was strong enough to fight with Shane Bismarck on equal grounds, but refused to leave his area of the world to ‘do something as tedious as lead’.
Ironic considering he was a team leader, but ask him to be a Council member and he’d probably beat you black and blue.
Then there was the aforementioned Demigod skilled at Divination, who was not a member of Aegis but could at the very least fight Samuel and possibly Rose to a draw.
“It is what it is there; few would challenge us after Nikita destroyed all the challengers last month without letting them have a chance to fight anyone else.” Rose sighed, knowing that Nikita, rank seven of the Council, was only trying to prevent anyone from suddenly having a higher rank than her…
She was surprisingly competitive for someone who was so quiet.
“Alright, next we move onto the teams… Team Alpha is currently in Australia communing with the Rainbow Serpent; it has agreed to cause no damage beyond its home at Uluru.” Charlie read off, he was the only team leader here at the meeting, which didn’t mean much as even if he weren’t there someone would have told him what happened.
The same for the other leaders, they’d get the information eventually, Aegis had a ‘if they aren’t here they’re busy’ view when it came to attendance, and they accepted it.
The strongest Demigods were all too old to care about being late to a meeting when they had to fight a God or some other mythological being in an hour.
“It causes the area around it to convert back into the dawn of creation; some people say they saw a dinosaur or two in the distance. Luckily they keep in that area…” That made very little sense scientifically…
If you considered immune systems and germs then Dinosaurs shouldn’t survive in the modern world, and modern humans couldn’t survive for long in that area.
“Team Bravo has been called into Western Europe on reports of people dying randomly; they’ll be checking that out.” Rose checked the next group, Team Bravo, the survivors is what the higher ups called them.
The higher ups would be referring to Edgar alone.
Team Bravo consisted of hard to kill Demigods, even Samuel would struggle to kill one or two of them.
Whenever there was an information shortage, Team Bravo was the team to be sent in to verify information, and then act accordingly; essentially they were nigh immortal scouts.
“Team Charlie is obviously here and still training.” Charlie said with a hint of sarcasm, not that anyone bothered to complain about it.
Everyone got sarcastic as they got older, and Demigods of their power were typically older than most humans could get.
“Team Delta is busy talking to that group of werewolves hiding in the Amazon, following which they’d be moving to around Washington to talk to the Vampire coven we found there a month ago.”
Ah, Team Delta, the peace-keeping team, they were rarely sent to deal with actual Gods and Divinity, instead being sent around the world to talk to other supernatural beings like the aforementioned Werewolves and Vampires.
Many, many aspects of the supernatural were real and existed, Demigods and Gods being just one part of it, and Aegis tried to keep relations between different groups fair…
To put it more bluntly, Aegis threatened all the other supernatural beings into leaving humans as alone as possible…
Demigods were on top of the chain of supernatural beings when it came to sheer power, second only to Dragons and Gods, generally, so the other races feared them.
“Okay… next would be team Epsilon… Yeah, let’s skip them.” It wasn’t even Edgar who suggested this, but Rose herself…
No one wanted anything to do with team Epsilon… it was the strangest team of Demigods Aegis employed, consisting of only experienced Demigods led by a Council-Candidate, the only constants of this team is that they went where no one else wanted to go, and that each member of the team had lesser known Godly Parents, or ones that were not really combat worthy.
Team Epsilon lived to prove that any Demigod could be dangerous. Last Charlie checked, a member of their group was a son of Dionysus of all people.
God of Wine and Parties, and his son willingly runs at Gods to beat them up.
Again, Epsilon was full of abnormal Demigods, no matter how logical their leader thought he was.
There was also the superstition that talking about team Epsilon for too long would summon a member of said team, but that was clearly nonsense.
At least, it was nonsense until Rose could prove that the leader of team Epsilon put a curse on the team itself to be where they are mentioned.
“Okay, skipping that we have team Foxtrot, who are a few hours away from fighting Ogoun, the Vodou God of Politics, War, Fire, Iron and Hunting…” Mary looked squarely at Charlie for a moment while said person scoffed.
He wasn’t going to be fighting that God. Charlie might seem like a counter to at least two of the God’s Principles, Charlie really wasn’t.
Under the correct conditions, Charlie could fight at an equal strength to Shane Bismarck, but more commonly he was not Council-level, he was honest enough to admit it.
A God with the opposite affinities was not ‘correct conditions’ when it came to what Charlie could do.
Besides, Foxtrot was an adaptable team, possessing as many different Principles as possible and usually being led by Nikita Quartz, or if she was unavailable, then someone at that Council-Candidate level.
Not strong enough to actually be in the Council, but strong enough to have been considered for the Council, some even were on the Council before the current iteration.
Epsilon’s leader was one of the latter.
“Charlie, someday, I will get you to fight seriously.” Charlie pointedly pretended that Rose did not exist, not wanting to entertain the idea of being a Council-member…
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Being a team leader was already annoying, leading the entirety of Aegis seemed like too much…
The only reason Edgar wasn’t dying from the workload was because Agent Karma and Rose worked together to help out Edgar. Edgar led through his sheer strength.
Edgar was the force that bound Aegis together, Charlie could admit to himself, even if Edgar currently looked like a homeless surfer dude.
In all honesty, Charlie himself wouldn’t have joined Aegis if it weren’t for Edgar… Edgar was a magnetic force when it came to other Demigods, randomly running into them, attracting them to his power, and the knowledge that regardless of what happened, Edgar could fix it.
“Damn, that was annoying me.” Again, regardless of Edgar’s current appearance of scratching a bit of snot out of his nose, Edgar was powerful and…
It was getting hard to defend the reputation of someone looking like Edgar though… Charlie now understood why Karma gave up.
“Edgar. You are disgusting. Go wash your hands before I kill you.” Eh, at least Rose was still trying… someone had to.
After his hands were cleaned, and the three were once more seated, now with cups of coffee/tea in front of them, they began to talk about other things.
“So Edgar, I got a question for you… You’re the premier weapon expert of Aegis, and Rose is the magic expert. Rose already admitted that she was interested in helping out with team Charlie, what about you?” Edgar looked at Charlie, taking a moment to sip at his tea before placing the cup down.
It was easy to forget that Edgar was French with how he dressed and his lack of an accent. One did not think of sloppy surfer when thinking of the French typically.
“I’d have to see a few videos of your fights or training sessions, but I’m sure I can pop in once in a while. Besides, each Council-member is required to teach other Demigods how to fight, the only exception being team leaders.” Charlie nodded to that, having forgotten that…
He wasn’t a team leader for a while, and he was never in the Council so Charlie wasn’t aware of the requirement… It did explain why Edgar was often found teaching.
Well, if he wasn’t hiding from Rose or Agent Karma, he was either teaching or being forced to do paperwork by the aforementioned two.
“Good… because my team is admittedly a bit lost in regards to that. The only one I can teach properly is Ignus due to our similarities, the others I have to wing it.” Charlie would never admit his faults in front of his team, but he wasn’t ignorant, especially of himself.
“You aren’t a bad teacher Charlie, in case you forgot, it was you who taught me how to use a gun?” Edgar offered, and Charlie scoffed.
“Maybe I did, but here we are, a few decades later and you can match me in sharpshooting, and my God-parent actually has a Principle related to aiming.” Left unsaid was that Edgar knew exactly who Charlie’s God-parent was, a side effect of his own powers.
Edgar, after meeting someone, could say with ninety per cent accuracy who the Divine parent of someone was, even if he had never seen them fight… of course, this only applied to Awakened Demigods though.
Edgar just shrugged, inwardly complaining about Charlie’s annoyances… because Charlie was effectively crippling himself with his weaponry.
Winter’s Bane was indeed a Divine Weapon, much like Edgar’s own, but unlike Edgar or even Jake Ignus…
Charlie was turning an unsuitable weapon into a Divine Weapon.
The sheer control over your power necessary to even attempt something like that was insane, Edgar would know given that he had trained himself to turn any weapon into a Divine Weapon, it was difficult to get it with even one.
And Edgar was also well aware that he was an irregularity amongst the Demigods, but still. Charlie was the only other Demigod Edgar knew that was capable of converting an unsuitable weapon into a Divine Weapon like Winter’s Bane.
It’s why Edgar didn’t stop Rose from complaining about Charlie’s lack of trying. Charlie actually was barely trying.
“Well that’s because I have a large affinity for weaponry in general. But sure, who uses weapons in your team again? I know Jake does, as well as Derek…” Edgar considered, leaving Charlie to fill in the gaps.
“Mark will be getting training from Shane, no one can train a child of Hephaestus like their eldest brother can, so I’m not even going to try too much there. As for Terri and Mary, Mary doesn’t use weapons because in her draconic form her body is essentially one, and Terri might need to learn how to use a pair of daggers, just something to protect herself.” Charlie offered, and Edgar nodded in agreement.
“That makes sense. Okay, I’ll be training Derek and Terri, as for Jake, we’ll split his training. You teach him ranged weaponry, and I’ll teach close.” Charlie blinked a bit…
“Wait, you actually want to teach Jake? What would you teach him exactly… I need to know so I can account for it.” Charlie added after Edgar just raised an eyebrow in question.
“Whatever I can really, it’ll depend on what Jake is good at. I really want to try and teach him swordsmanship though…” Charlie shuddered at that idea.
As stated many a time, Edgar was the greatest weapon user in Aegis, no one was better than him in any weapon, though one may be his equal, no one was his better.
Swords were a commonly used weapon by the Aegis Demigods, not really because of their power but because of how modern media has romanticized the sword as some all powerful weapon.
It wasn’t as amazing as they made it out to be, but a sword was a good weapon in the hands of a master.
Edgar was the greatest master of the sword on Earth, so if he thought that Jake would do well learning to use a sword, then Jake’s talent for swordsmanship must be high.
“That’s a scary idea… if he gets good enough with a sword he’ll be an all-range fighter… we honestly don’t have a lot of those.” Charlie could be considered one to an extent…
Any older Demigod would have learnt something to defend themselves at all ranges, it was part of their survival instinct… and a bit of common sense.
If you possess a weakness, you either get rid of the weakness, or make the weakness irrelevant.
As an example of the first, a long range expert learns martial arts to defeat people who come in close.
As an example of the latter, a long range expert gets so good no one can get close without dying.
Demigods rarely if ever tried the latter, because their opponents were Gods. If they were battling a God of Archery using a bow, there was no way to win.
So erasing your weakness was common sense to the group of Demigods.
“Yes, an all-range Demigod would be a nice addition to your team… he’d be the youngest too.” Edgar added, and Charlie acknowledged it with a nod.
“Well I was also intending to teach him magic, but I also doubt he’d have the patience for most branches of magic beyond Divination and Pyromancy.” Rose considered, and Charlie really had to stop and consider…
Jake really could be a Favoured. With the first and second strongest Demigods both wanting to train him in their greatest skills, the boy was extremely lucky.
There was a sudden knock on the door, though no one in the room was surprised given their abilities to detect the presence of others was extreme.
“Come in.” Edgar called out, and in walked Agent Karma, and following behind him-
“Hello Edgar, Rose, Charlie.” The yawning monotone voice of Shane Bismarck, fourth seat of the Council spoke out as he shuffled into the room.
Charlie, regardless of his cowboy-thug looks, enjoyed cartoons, anime too. The closest similarity to a character from an anime Shane had was L from Death Note.
“Hey Shane, you’re finally here… what were you doing for the past month?” Charlie asked, having called Shane more than a month ago to come help train Mark.
Sitting down on a chair, stretching out his limbs much like a cat, the eldest Demigod of Aegis ran a hand through his own dusty red hair with a sigh.
“I only got the message today… I was busy creating a new weapon for myself inside my workshop for the past month… I took a break today and happened to see the message.” Charlie just chuckled, accepting the explanation at face value.
Shane was someone who only looked lazy because he was a workaholic at all other times. Shane liked creating things like the common man liked breathing.
“Let me guess, you watched some new anime and got some inspiration from there… someday you’ll get sued by some animation company.” Charlie warned, only slightly joking.
They’d never sue Shane when he got their anime even more buyers by being an unintentional advertisement… heck, on occasion he even modified anything he built based on an anime, and then a month or two later that modification would be included in the actual anime.
“I was just busy making my own Optimus Prime. I always wanted a Transformer.” Charlie, very, very carefully… dropped his jaw.
Edgar and Rose were both surprised as well, though Rose didn’t really watch cartoons like the three men in the room.
She liked her drama.
“…You made an actual Transformer like Optimus Prime? Just one, right?” Charlie had worried this day would come…
Ever since he and Shane saw Pacific Rim, he knew it would happen eventually, he just didn’t expect that day to be so soon.
They watched Pacific Rim about six months ago.
“Yeah, quantity is nice, but I like creating unique existences from time to time. And besides… I didn’t have enough money to buy the materials for a Jaeger.” Everyone in the room, including Agent Karma, palmed their faces with a sigh.
“Oh… if only everyone knew how you really were…” Charlie mumbled, looking at the confused face of Shane.
He didn’t even realize where he went wrong with actually building a giant robot.
“Okay, okay… we all expected this to happen someday, let’s work with it. Is the robot autonomous?” Rose asked, looking to Shane in question.
“No, I don’t work with A.I that often. Besides, Energon is not a real substance so I needed an alternative power source. In this case, I decided to use the ambient magic of a Demigod.” Rose in particular had widened eyes here.
“You managed to harness the ambient magic around a Demigod? So these suits wouldn’t work if we put, say, Agent Karma in them?” this was a deceptively important question.
“No, humans just don’t have enough magic in them, even if they were arch-mage level like the Agent. To better explain, the magic of a Demigod is the base requirement.” Shane’s explanation drew sighs of relief from all over the room.
Aegis was an organization built by and for Demigods, with only communications assistance from the U.N. There were rules that Aegis had to abide by though.
If a Demigod is involved in the situation, it’s Aegis’ problem. If a God is involved, it’s Aegis’ problem. If the supernatural is involved, it’s Aegis’ problem.
For every problem they solve, Aegis is paid.
Those are just some of the ‘rules’ put simply, another one is that Aegis would create no weapons of mass destruction, or if Aegis does create something like that, it must not be useable by base humans.
This was to ensure that no Demigod would create weapons for a country and give that country power to go to war.
Basic things like swords, spears, those were fine, they could even sell them to weapon collectors, but things like a giant robot which was most likely capable of destroying a city given time?
Oh that was not okay… luckily, it could only be used by Demigods, keeping in line with the rule.
“Okay, so, giant robot… Shane, what are the drawbacks?” Edgar asked, interested in this creation.
“Well, as I said, it draws on the ambient magic of a Demigod. That ambient magic is one of the key reasons why we aren’t affected by physics like base humans, so your body will be weaker inside the robot. Also, teleportation magic doesn’t work on it, so you’d either need to have it waiting at the battlefield, or have a storage dimension as large as mine.”
Those were large drawbacks, workable drawbacks in the sense that Shane pretty much admitted that no Demigod could carry these robots around.
Shane had the highest storage capacity of all Demigods, and that included even Edgar and Rose, a side-effect of Shane continuously expanding the size of his magic over a thousand or so years.
Sometimes it was easy to forget that Shane was a literal millennial, and then you’d be reminded of the odd disturbances such as his storage space.
“Does the abilities of the user affect the robot?” Rose asked, drawing Shane back into consideration of the ‘ambient magic’ part of the robot’s abilities.
“Well obviously the robot is affected by the abilities of the user, but I have the feeling you were talking more about the magical side than the physical side.” Shane said, waving his arm as a page fell into his hand as he began to draw a bit on it.
“The physical aspect is muscle memory to an extent, if the user can do something, the robot can do the same thing on a much larger scale, such as flips and fighting styles. When it comes to magic, it is possible to supercharge the robot into being more durable and faster depending on your ambient magic.” Shane said, lifting the page to show the page divided in two.
On one half showed the name Edgar, the other the name Rose.
Beneath the names were ‘advantages and disadvantages’ of the following people using the robot.
Amongst the list was that Edgar had a really small amount of ambient magic compared to other Demigods due to constantly using his magic on boosting his physical abilities, but the robot would have all of Edgar’s skills with weaponry.
For Rose, she had a large amount of ambient magic so the robot would be extremely durable and strong, but due to how the robot worked, Rose wouldn’t be able to use magic, her major skill.
“Any weapons for it?” Charlie asked, feeling as if he was being dropped out of the conversation at this point…
Karma just kept quiet, not willing to get Shane to think about a robot for base humans.
“It generates a weapon for the user. If you got in, it might give you a gun, if I got in, I’d get a sword, if Samuel got in he’d get gauntlets or something.” Shane added as the conversation began to pick up pace.
After almost a solid hour of talking about the robot, Charlie finally had to leave, but not before he brought the topic of conversations back to his team.
“Okay, so between the four of us, we’ll be teaching team Charlie?” Charlie asked, noting that if they had another trainer they could each sit with one student.
“Well, I’ll be teaching my younger brother, he has yet to choose a specialty or master crafting.” Shane admitted, always willing to help his younger brothers and sisters, as long as they didn’t disturb him from his focus too much.
One did not disturb Leonardo as he painted the Mona Lisa did they?
“I’ll handle Mary and Terri, those two would benefit from some magic… especially the former…” Rose cracked her fingers with an evil smile…
Rose actually enjoyed teaching, and was a good one, but Mary had a way of bringing out the bad in her.
“That leaves me to work with Derek and Charlie to work with Jake… though I also want to train Jake, it can be done after he has his specialty.” As interested as Edgar was in Jake, he was also aware that it would be pointless to overload the younger Demigod with information.
Being a one-trick pony was bad, but being a jack of all trades, master of none was a good way to die when fighting Gods.
“Alright, we’ll keep training our current people, and if necessary rotate… for example, Shane I think your fighting style would be suitable for Terri and Jake.” Charlie added, making Shane shrug.
“I might teach them, I might not, who knows what will end up happening.” Shane had a ‘come as it will’ attitude in regards to long term planning…
It irritated Rose and Karma, but they just sighed in acceptance of the fourth strongest (known) being on the planet.
“It would be interesting though… having an archer with your fighting style.” Charlie added, and Shane actually considered the idea, having been ignoring the fighting style of Jake…
“That would be weirdly cool… but like you said, he’s not an archer yet, at least, he’s not a Demigod archer.” Shane shut down the idea before it could take off, not willing to read too much into it.
Edgar was hiding his smirk from the others even as they finalized everything…
‘Depending on how he reacts to the lessons, we’d be making someone capable of fighting at all ranges and much more… fire, divination, poison and medicine…’ Edgar thought to himself as he signalled Karma who nodded.
“Got it, I’ll send the messages to team Charlie. Their schooling will be turned into lesson packets and they’ll be given the usual school hours for training.” Agent Karma arranged everything, tapping away on his little messenger.
“I’m feeling a bit sorry for those kids all of a sudden. I must be going soft.” Charlie joked as the four Demigods laughed…
Karma, watching the meeting could only agree… those Demigods were soon going to learn the difference between Century Demigods and Modern Demigods.
“Poor kids… their fight against Python was simple…” Karma could only hope that those children learnt that their battle was only a taste of the wider world they lived in…
And if they were to be trained by some of the strongest Demigods in existence, then unfortunately, they were getting tossed into the deep end immediately after learning how to swim, so to speak.
Eh, they’d survive.