Black Knight had a reasonable sense of style. Namely, a pure black business suit carrying similar enhancements to what Revenant had in his own suit, with the sole difference of it covering the entirety of Black Knight’s body.
Black gloves, black shoes (oxfords, the gold standard to wear with a suit), a smooth black helmet There is also an over the shoulder jacket that’s there mostly for the looks.
Also a sheathed sword and a gun in a holster at his belt.
Underneath all of that was a muscular man in his mid thirties, with a lot of scars (some of them coming from burns) scattered throughout the body, with buzz cut brown hair and brown eyes. He was nice enough to don his full outfit before asking questions.
Revenant and Humility were the only people present in the room for this.
“So, what happened?” Black Knight asks once his outfit is finally on him. “Something unexpected, I presume?”
“You can put it that way, yes.” Revenant replies. “We were dead, but apparently not anymore. I remember you telling me that you’d follow me until death in exchange for getting you out from death row, for as long as it won’t be boring. Is the deal still on?”
Black Knight tilts his head a bit. He will ask about the death part in a moment, but for now, he has another focus.
“Will it be boring?” He then asks. Revenant gives him a faint smile.
“No. Quite the opposite.” Revenant replies. “You never had a hunting ground this large and with this many strong opponents to face. You’ll absolutely love it, I guarantee you that.”
“Deal.” Black Knight wastes no time answering that. Good. Because, to be fully honest, Revenant couldn’t be one hundred percent sure how the villain would respond to that. He was always a bit of a wild card. “So, what exactly happened?”
“Apparently the world we all lived in was actually a superhero comic book.” Revenant says. Repeating that multiple times has more or less normalized the concept in his eyes, but it probably gives Black Knight a bit ‘wtf’ moment. “But something has brought us to existence in a distant future. Mankind’s spread throughout the Galaxy and so on. And guess what?” He grins. “We’re currently lost in a hell maze where some local equivalent of a Wishgranter dropped who knows how many space horrors that we now have to deal with in the process of escape. How does that sound?”
Black Knight spends a few seconds digesting the news and making his mind about the situation.
“I love it.” Black Knight replies. There is some sort of primal delight in his voice. “And who is the robot beside you?”
“Friendly local mission control.” Revenant replies. “And an unshackled rogue AI with a Slaughterer of Billions in its list of titles. Very friendly, so please don’t try to fight it. It’s more of a scientist.”
“I don’t fight weaklings.” Black Knight replies dryly. Humility bends its neck a little to look at him. Is it insulted? “What’s the plan?”
“For now I need you to make sure that Demiurge doesn’t have stupid ideas.” Revenant replies. “It’s mostly bodyguard duty. We have a brief lull in hostilities, trying to improve our numbers before another engagement. No problems with that?”
“None at all.” Black Knight replies. “You gave me the best fights of my life. I trust you to give me even more of those. I can wait.”
Good. Good. Black Knight didn’t lie. He either stayed quiet or spoke the truth. If he said all of that, it meant that his loyalty was ensured. Great. His ability to deal with armored enemies was slightly limited unless he got into melee range, but against infantry?
He was an SS-Ranker for a reason.
And also their best shot at taking down the Friendly Local Knight Templar if he decided that it’s time to get violent.
Humility doesn’t feel the need to have his individuality explained. Like with Decay, it was more or less explained in the one comic book that Humility showed to Revenant back on day one. And it was one of the cases of a pretty weak individuality that was changed through training and some equipment into something terrifying.
Black Knight’s individuality was called Expand. It allowed the villain to ‘expand’ the properties of objects that his body was in contact with, in either size or scale. Yes, it was one of the tricky ones.
With a sword in his hand, he could expand its sharpness, make it cut through nearly everything like a hot knife through butter. He could expand its toughness to make it not shatter when used to block a superhumanly powerful blow.
He could also expand the size of a particular quality. Like, say, use a one meter long sword to decapitate someone standing five meters away from him by expanding the sharpness area.
Regretfully, he could only expand size in one dimension. He couldn’t make a sword into a large-scale AoE cutting attack, merely make it longer or thicker.
He could also expand the durability or impact resistance of his outfit. This is why it covered his entire body (and contrary to how it looked like, it was mostly a one-piece uniform minus boots). It’s to make sure that there are no weak spots in the armor and that it influences the whole thing at once.
But even in civilian outfits he was still a menace, easily able to turn a simple T-Shirt into a de facto bulletproof vest.
Black Knight being able to only do one type of expansion at the same time was the only thing that made him defeatable. Otherwise he would do a Size + Scale Up on his sword at the same time, and chopped through everything.
For now, it was probably the best idea to let him digest the news for a moment. All while waiting for Songbird to show up.
***
Onslaught wasn’t mastermind-material. Yes, it was pretty hard to imagine that when you saw how easily she was reading and manipulating Revenant, but to be honest, it was because Revenant was allowing himself to be manipulated. And because she had years to learn how to read him.
This didn’t change the fact that when needed (namely when it was about love), she could be surprisingly machiavellian. She decided to show it a moment after Black Knight got introduced to a new world, Decay volunteering to show him around.
She told him that she needed some particular type of food from the officer’s mess hall’ freezer room, prompting Revenant to ask her if she was pregnant and started having odd culinary desires.
She showed him her tongue again, and then told him to go. Or else. It was at this point that Revenant understood what was happening (namely, that she was scheming something) and decided to go along to see what it was.
Half-way to the freezer he had a pretty good idea of what was happening. Hypothermia was mysteriously gone, Onslaught presently unaccompanied and… well, freezer, right? It was her sort of place.
He isn’t wrong. Revenant enters the freezer - It’s a large area, multiple lines of shelves full of packaged food. Despite centuries in the future, some things do not change. And then, behind it, he sees Hypothermia’s back, the woman huddled over one of the lower shelves at the back of the freezer.
Revenant can walk quietly if he wants to. His business suit shoes have some subtle alterations to their inside structure to make it easier, to limit the sounds that fabric can make and to make sure that his shoes don’t make a lot of noise either.. And the floor? The floor was smooth. Nothing to trip. Nothing to make noise. Not even something from underneath it, as there were no structural flaws to it.
Lack of floorboards screeching at the worst possible moment was extraordinarily helpful.
It was cold, but… yeah, freezers tend to be like that. It wasn’t a problem to him, not after the Villain Academy. Say what you want about Pain Tolerance classes, they excelled at changing significant issues into mild discomfort at worst.
He walks past most of the shelves, before stopping himself right next to Hypothermia. She was normally more attentive, so she had to be pretty focused on something. And yes, he quickly realized what it was.
Hypothermia used a now empty shelf to do her crafts. She was busy creating figurines from her ice. At least a dozen of those were placed around the shelf, each of them with the degree of details that would make ice sculptures out there stare at them with shock and disbelief.
She could do more than just create ice from air moisture and water and move it around. She could also shape it. Compress it into different forms of ice. Her skills with that were, to be honest, incredible.
She could even somewhat alter the color and transparency of the ice by tinkering with its internal structure and density. The colors were mostly between white and pale blue, but… it was still looking rather incredible.
Revenant found himself somewhat enthralled by the sight. Ignoring the cold, he just stands there, watching Hypothermia hard at work, new figurines manifesting out of nowhere between her hands. Sometimes not up to her standards, so she quickly rearranges them until they satisfy her artistic perfectionism.
People they met in the past. People they have met since arriving in this world. Hypothermia trained her crafts on things she knew how they looked. She could do completely original things, and she did it from time to time. What she did now she did for practice.
One of the figurines is that of Revenant. His figurine is smiling warmly. He isn’t sure if he ever smiled like that. Maybe when he was Analyst? He barely remembers that guy. But it feels like something he’d do.
Hypothermia is hard at work, taking advantage of her free time to engage in her artistic hobby. Revenant is watching her quietly. There is something of a quiet intensity on her face, that he only sees a fragment of, that’s… just lovely to see.
It seems that Onslaught wanted him to see that. It was her victory this one time, it seems. He just couldn’t peel his eyes off her sister.
Eventually Hypothermia realized that she wasn’t alone. Leading to a freak-up, and the woman scrambling to grab the figurines and put them in a cardboard box that used to contain frozen food, babbling out apologies for… everything?
“Mia, MIA!” He decides to intervene, grabbing her hand. The woman freezes. “It’s alright, I’m not weirded out or anything.” Was it about his own figurine? “Calm down.”
***
Five minutes later, they are outside of the freezer. Sitting on two chairs right next to each other on the side of the corridor (Revenant pulled them from one of the nearby rooms). Hypothermia is significantly calmer now.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
She got herself an apple juice box. Apparently, those were still a thing in the distant future, and they would do best to drink them before their expiration date. Despite it being counted in years thanks to some new era of preservatives that carried no risk of medical complications. How joyous.
She always liked apple juice. Right now she was drinking this one (that he wasn’t sure where she got from) through a straw, probably as a part of the process of calming herself after the brief freak out.
“Sorry.” Hypothermia says after a moment of slurping the juice.
“What for?” He asks back.
“For making your figurine without your permission.” She replies. “For doing weird things in my free time. For taking space in the freezer.”
Revenant sighs.
“You apologize for too many things.” Revenant replies, Hypothermia glances at him over her juice box. “I don’t mind the figurines. Your free time is yours to use for whatever you want to do. And I’m sure that we can live without a single shelf at one of the ship’s many freezers, Mia.”
She doesn’t reply, instead she slurps her juice loudly. Revenant decides that he needs to be more proactive for a moment.
“They really messed you up, didn’t they?” He asks, Hypothermia glancing at him again, clearly worried. “That cult thing, the thing that you don’t talk about, at least in detail. You’re an artist by nature, but you keep freaking out when someone sees your works. Despite me seeing them multiple times already.”
He failed to give them enough attention back then. How did he miss how beautiful her works were? Was he that much obsessed with his own death scheme? Of course he was. Ugh.
“Sorry.” Hypothermia apologizes again. “I was told to train my skills. To fight. That’s what mattered to my parents. Things like that were distractions. They didn’t like it when I was distracted.”
Yeah, one more file to the ‘Hypothermia’s parents were assholes’ folder. Thankfully, her legal parent was now Destro, and while he didn’t have a lot of things to do with her (she was twenty eight for God’s sake), it was still a good thing.
“They were absolute assholes.” Revenant comments. Hypothermia surprises him by nodding lightly. “You don’t talk a lot about your time in that cult.”
“You don’t talk about your time in Villain Academy, either.” She replies, avoiding his gaze. Yeah. Good point. “It was bad. I don’t like talking about it. I’m happy that my parents are dead. And I don’t want them to return. Destro has always been more of a father to me than my biological father.”
Ah. He wasn’t the only person who lost nearly everything back then in New Liberty. She lost her replacement paternal figure and best friend for life. She suffered as much as he did, but he never really realized that, too focused on his own pain.
And instead of answering her feelings, instead of the two of them trying to live once more while helping each other to get over their tragedy… he pulled her into his revenge rampage. Made her a killer.
“What happened?” Mia asks, pulling him out of his thoughts. Right time to do it, he… his thoughts were heading into the bad place.
“I just realized what a dick I was to you.” Revenant replies, Hypothermia giving him a confused look. “You lost as much as I did, but I completely ignored that fact. You loved me and I responded to your feelings by using you to stage my own death, all while making you kill an awful lot of people.”
“It’s alright.” She says, grasping his hand. “I wanted revenge too. Don’t blame yourself.”
It’s not as easy as it should have been. He blames himself for a lot of things. He has reasons to do it. Let’s… let’s just change the subject for now.
“And you should find pride in your arts.” Revenant decides to prove his utmost mastery of smooth subject changes. “They are beautiful. The fact that I didn’t notice it either is just a testament to how messed up in the head I was back then.”
She seems to be torn between positive surprise at the compliment from him and… something else. The latter wins. But the former gets a mention too.
“You were grieving.” She replies. “It’s not the best mindset for admiring the arts. Uhm. You think that my sculptures are beautiful?” Someone is clearly in disbelief over this. Also… she is incredibly understanding, isn’t she? Almost too much.
“Yes, Mia.” Revenant replies. “Yes, I do. You should have been more open with them. I’m sure that most people with any level of artistic sensitivity will tell you the same thing. I think that Virtue told you they were breathtaking back then, right?” Mia says nothing, instead she glances to the side, clearly avoiding his eyes. “... you didn’t believe her, did you?”
“People told me a lot of things without meaning them.” Hypothermia replies. “Back then, in the cult. I’m not sure if I can believe it when other people say it. But I believe it when you say it.”
… goddamn it. He realizes it now. He really was falling for her, wasn’t he? And he wasn’t sure if for the right reasons.
It was out of protectiveness. He wanted to have someone he could care for. It’s as if a part of him that was Analyst - with his heroic delusions - raised their head for a moment and yelled that they wanted to be a hero to someone at least.
Onslaught, despite her disability, wasn’t even nearly in the same category. She was way too independent and headstrong. It wasn’t the ‘physical’ protectiveness, more like ‘emotional’. Hypothermia, in the meantime…
Was it Onslaught’s scheme? To bring Analyst a bit more to the light? If so, it was working.
“I can practically feel myself falling in love with you, you know?” Revenant decides to prove his honesty, prompting Hypothermia to stare at him in shock. “I… care for you. I want to care for you. I want to help you. I’m not sure if it’s a healthy foundation for a relationship, though. It feels too one-sided.”
In a very twisted way, it was akin to what he had towards Chronoshift. She was his morality pet (except it didn’t work an awful lot). Someone to care for. Someone to prevent him from losing his mind completely by reminding him that he is a good person for at least his daughter.
And despite all his attempts, he feels as if he failed at that job (he blames Decay though).
Hypothermia thinks it over for a moment. She is… well, she has emotional intelligence in spades, akin to Onslaught, she just fails to apply it to herself. Eventually, though, she speaks.
“I think it’s alright.” Hypothermia replies. “Because I care for you too. I want to care for you in the future too. And I think you still need an awful lot of help. The feelings go both ways. So it’s fine.”
Ah. Can he walk out of it now? Will he be alright with himself if he walks out right of it? It’s… it’d feel like betraying her. Dealing a mortal blow to someone who trusted him, stabbing them in the back.
He wants her to be happy.
On the other hand, wouldn’t going for it out of pity be dishonest? Abusive, almost? But… is it really pity? He looks at her and sees her through the lenses of their relationship before their death. With how he treated her love as a guarantee of loyalty. He is acting as if he was just trying to pay her back for it. But…
Is it really this? Or did he just see her with a mind no longer addled by grief and sees the actual Hypothermia behind all of this… and actually loves her?
This is so incredibly confusing. Revenant is smart enough for self-introspection, but he was so far out of his usual fields of activity that it didn’t help him a lot.
Hypothermia is looking at him questioningly, clearly aware that he was thinking about something deeply, She let him work whatever’s bugging him out in peace. Eventually, he arrives at a conclusion.
Her lips are soft too.
Her eyes shoot wider for a moment in clear surprise, before she returns the favor, the two of them making out for a short while. It’s… significantly less calm than their first kiss. There are way more emotions involved on his side.
Does this work as an answer? No. Probably not. He should probably give her a better one, so he pulls back a little. The slight blush on her face is straight up adorable and warms him up on the inside.
“Do you remember me saying that I’m not sure what I feel towards you, during our first date?” He asks, Hypothermia nodding. “I think that I’ve made up my mind. I want you in my life, Mia. I want to pay you back for my fuck-up and what I did to you. But I also want to make you happy simply because I want you to be happy. So if you think that being right next to me together with Oni will make you happy… I’m all for it.”
She stares at him for a few seconds, clearly shocked by his words. Then she comes to a decision herself and hugs him.
It’s nice. They just stay like that for a longer while. Revenant is maybe slightly groaning internally over his utter inability to not fall for Onslaught’s schemes. She just involved him in a love triangle that will develop into a love square once Kitsune is up and…
… somehow he can’t say no to her. Dammit.
Alright, time to announce it. It’ll make him sound a bit like a horndog, but… he prefers to be open about things and expectations. It feels like a crucial necessity for this sort of complicated relationship arrangement.
So, he pulls back a little from the hug, Hypothermia clearly looking slightly dejected over the end of physical contact, before speaking.
“Look, I’ll be honest about it.” He says, Hypothermia listening to him attentively. “I’m… not exactly good when it comes to… initiating things. When you want to spend time with me, you should tell me, okay? Yes, this includes this sort of spending time with me. I’ll do my best to make it happen. Don’t take the lack of initiative on my end as coldness, I just…”
He did start it once or twice with Oni, but… let’s be real. They were already in their bed, and it was rather clear where the things were heading either way. It was just making the small final push.
And at the second time, he was fairly sure that Oni would make the push a moment later if he didn’t.
“Alright.” Mia nods with a steadfast look on her face. “It’s fine. I’m not very good at that either. Oni does it for us both.” It’s hard to disagree with that fact. “But now, I think that I want it tonight.”
“Next date?” Revenant asks.
“No.” Mia shakes her head, a faint blush on her face. “The other thing.”
The other… oh. That came out of nowhere.
“That’s… err…” He is actually taken aback by it a little. “You’re sure? That’s quite fast, and… I expected it to happen a bit later.”
“Oni isn’t the only person who waited her whole life for it.” Hypothermia replies. And… yeah. Good point. Someone wants to make it a done deal as soon as possible, and that… that he can understand.
***
When compared to Amplitude and Demiurge, Songbird was small, lean and agile. Music-loving tomboy by nature, she changed a lot since their time at the school. They all did, but she was among the ones that changed the most.
Her body got a lot of muscles, while maintaining a slim build. And scars. Oh god, the scars. The worst one was at her throat, the nasty and irregular scar. A relatively low price for having your throat slit so deep that your vocal cords were gone.
It still contributed to how much Songbird lost it afterwards. She loved using instruments, but she was also a singer. After that injury, she couldn’t even speak. She learned how to get around that with her individuality, but… it was a much later development. Once she already became the Musical Killer.
Her villain outfit was a black body armor with some violet highlights. Focus on defense. The idea to expand on her uniform by adding some terrifying details (like human faces, fake but convincingly so, and resembling her past victims, scattered around the outer surface of her armor) was vetoed by Revenant.
Mostly because they would get damaged sooner or later by her individuality. Revenant was no stranger to intimidation factor. It would work.
Her individuality was potent. Control and generation of sounds - and vibrations in general. That sounds less scary than it actually was. At a distance she could deafen or disorient people - especially in closed areas such as the maze they were all in. At close quarters she could straight up blow people to shreds with a vibration wave powerful enough to pulverize their body.
She couldn’t do much to stop bullets, hence the combat armor. Like Amplitude, she had serious signs of being a glass cannon. High firepower, limited defensive capabilities. Her firepower was lesser than that of the other villain, but… she had more ‘utility’ usages.
Suppression of noises. Faking the voice of other people. This sort of thing. Her individuality also made her quite proficient in certain things, just ask Demiurge.
Demiurge herself stares at the tube, the woman nearly ready to release. Her emotions hard to summarize, even Amplitude (loyally standing by her lover’s side) failing to untangle it. She expects things to get interesting soon.
She’ll get not just that but also much more.
***
Black Knight impression. Not sure abotu the helmet, it's probably a bit slimmer than this.
Obraz [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1029465796570783838/1108581850420617268/01507-28470_up.png?width=428&height=643]