Kao o Minai

[Yukika Inoue]

The teenager dreamed. The simplest of dreams for someone her age - her unconscious state feed her images of a glorious heroine, fighting evil and fending off the beasts that threatened her home and family. Her triumph of the evils of her dreams fell short, however, when it all turned black. She found herself floating in a suspended abyss, or was she falling? It was hard to tell when everything was utter darkness. She turned every which way, looking for anything. Cold chills crawled down her back when she realized there was nothing at all. That is, there was nothing until the bright contrast of white appeared, his voice boomed.

“My name is Omni. This is not the world you know. This is the Omniverse. You interest me, so I have made you part of it. The Omniverse is a place that reflects the wishes of those who are part of it. But! There are rules. I will explain them only once, so listen carefully.”

The girl, obviously terrified, attempted to interrupt his speech, only to find that hers wasn’t working like it should. She was mute. This only terrified her even more, but still, she forced to listen as he spoke. His outstretched hand reached out to her, offering the small orb about the size of a tennis ball. It glowed with a glorious, golden coalescence that was completely remarkable, and maybe even beautiful in its own right. Much like a gem. She awed it momentarily before Omni continued.

“This is Omnilium. It’s what ties the Omniverse together. Without it, you are nothing. With it, anything you desire can be yours. But you will need more than this. If you desire it enough, you will find it. You will find that using it comes naturally. Just think of what you desire most.”

Her puzzled expression was nothing Omni hadn’t seen from other primes before. Confusion and distrust. Her mind pried at the colorful orb. How could something so meaningless and small create anything the wielder desired? This was like something directly out of a fairy tale.

“You will not be alone in the Omniverse. There are others. Of course, they, too desire Omnilium. Do not fear death. For as long as you interest me, you will be reborn.”

Her heart probably skipped at least three beats after he said that. Death?! Where the hell was he planning on sending her. She was starting to feel too much fear to call this a dream anymore. That’s probably what scared her the most.

“That’s all you need to know right now. You’ll figure out the rest soon enough. I’ll be watching … and waiting.”

Suddenly, the blackness changed into white. A fountain spewing white liquid stood before her, large and tall like the buildings of her hometown.

“Waiting for what?!” She screamed at no one in particular since Omni had disappeared with the darkness. “This doesn’t make sense at all.” The teen muttered to herself, looking down at the floor. She thought of her father and what he must be thinking about her having gone missing. He was probably ready to destroy anything in his wake to get his daughter back, as protective as he was with his last living family member.

The Megitsune’s gaze ventured outward to the endless white void, only contrasted with the groups of people walking around in different directions and the large formations far in the distance in every direction. It was too difficult to make out what they were exactly from this distance, seeing as how they were possibly miles away - If her depth perception was correct.
With a heavy sigh, the girl pulled out her mask from her robe and donned it on her face.

“What do I do now?”

[Wisteria Blossom]

Drip.

Wisteria stirred, half rousing from her sleep. Her brows twitched. Something was off.

She felt nothing - as if she were floating on a cushion of air. Reaching out with a tentacle, she sought the waters of her small pool, only to come up empty.

No, not just empty. Void. No carpet. No stone. No anything.

With a confused blink, she opened her bright, purple eyes, then blinked again. The emptiness was so black, so total, that she wasn't sure at first if she actually had opened them. Only when she looked down was she finally able to see something other than the endless infinity - herself, lit as if by the sun. No, as if she were the sun.

She really had to lay off the junk food before bed.

Drip.

"Hello?" she tried to say, but found her voice stuck in her throat.

Another drip, like the echo of a faucet from far away, impossibly loud and echoing in the stillness. Wisteria turned around, searching, and came to a sudden stop. "Ah!" she again tried to gasp, meeting, again, silence.

Her first thought was of The Baby - the first person in the world born with a Quirk. It was said that the child's skin radiated light so intense that it could outshine the stars themselves. As Wisteria gazed upon the sitting figure, she thought that the Luminescent Baby - as it had come to be known - would have had a run for its money in this creature. It sat as if on an invisible chair, one leg tucked up, foot on the edge of its seat, the other dangling. Its proportions were child-like. Its skin was white and glowing, and nothing could be seen of its features - save for a mouth.

Drip.

Something fell from the glowing chin and spattered across the empty infinity. Then, slowly, it opened its mouth, and began to speak - words wearily mechanical, as if it had said these words a hundred-thousand times - no, a hundred million times before.

“My name is Omni. This is not the world you know. This is the Omniverse. You interest me, so I have made you part of it. The Omniverse is a place that reflects the wishes of those who are part of it. But there are rules. I will explain them only once, so listen carefully.

“This is Omnilium. It’s what ties the Omniverse together. Without it, you are nothing. With it, anything you desire can be yours. But you will need more than this. If you desire it enough, you will find it. You will find that using it comes naturally. Just think of what you desire most.  

“You will not be alone in the Omniverse. There are others. Of course, they, too desire Omnilium. Do not fear death. For as long as you interest me, you will be reborn.

“That’s all you need to know right now. You’ll figure out the rest soon enough. I’ll be watching … and waiting.”

There were a thousand things to ask, not least of which was how to get home. She stared at him, at this hunched figure, and opened her mouth again.

"Are you alone here?"

The words still didn't come, but it seemed as if she had been heard, regardless. Slowly, the head lifted from its slumped position. Something wet streaked down its cheek, rolling down to the chin, and dropped.

Drip.

The fabric of infinity rippled, becoming liquid beneath her tentacles. With a silent shriek she plunged below the salty surface, pulled as if by a tether, yanked at what felt like hundreds of miles an hour, deeper and deeper into the black nothing, tentacles whipping behind her. Her lungs screamed, fighting to keep from taking a dooming lungful, her eyes watering. Ahead, a pinprick of white light exploded into view, rushing towards her...

---

In the Nexus, a fountain had appeared. Looking like a wishing well, with a simple spire in the center that disgorged more water, the bottom of the basin was black as night. The waters trembled... Then started to churn, thrashing as if there was someone drowning within.

With a moment of hesitation, someone approached the edge - a black haired girl with a fox mask. Perhaps she intended to see if someone needed rescuing. Perhaps she was merely curious, also a new arrival in this world.

Whatever her reasons, when she reached the edge and looked inside, the waters momentarily stilled. And then, with a terrific explosion of water, a mass of writhing tentacles exploded from its surface. They wrapped around her as they collided, writhing in a distressed panic that was easily mistaken for coiled attack. The tentacle girl was only able to extract herself after a few moments, lifting up with a chest-heaving gasp!

"...Where am I?"

[Yukika Inoue]

The heroine jumped back, distancing her for the large tentacle beast that had just latched onto her. The suction cups of the appendages left marks on her beautifully pure skin. She gasped as they released her from their powerful grasp.

“You foul be-” The Megitsune caught her tongue, speaking in her normal voice. She cleared her throat and spoke again in a deeper voice, hidden behind her ominous mask.

“You foul beast! How dare you attack me like that! You’ve bruised my skin!” She exclaimed, trying to not make herself sound like a whiny teenager. Which, that was exactly what she was.

“Oh, I’m s-so sorry, lmiss! I-I didn’t mean it, I s-swear!” The young girl pleaded in hopes of not causing a mess of a fight with a stranger. The sword at hip gave Wisteria a good shiver. “I-I was brought here b-by the big wh-white baby p-person!”

Yukika’s battle stance halted at the mention of Omni. She stood up straight and let out a soft sigh, not letting go of the hearty octave she had taken to disguise her normal voice.

“I see. So you too are imprisoned here as I? This is troublesome. First I get knocked into a coma by a Kami-level threat and now I’m stuck in some perpetually odd dimension in my own dreams. Nandakara?” She sighed in her native tongue. In fact, she had just realized how good her English had become. She had already known English from school, but by no means was she actually good at it.

“H-Hai!” Wisteria responded. “I was just about to enter the heroes academy before I found myself here with you.”

“You are a hero as well?” The Megitsune asked, rather surprised.

“Y-Yes, well, I was going to be, I hope to still.” She replied with a slight spark in her eye. There was no doubting it was the same one Yukika had growing up around the heroes of her world. Hopes and dreams fostered great thing in the hands of youth.

“I too wish to be a renowned heroine. One that people speak of for centuries to come.” Yukika said, removing her mask and toning her voice back to it’s normal pitch. Slightly higher and softer than before. “My father never saw it in me, but I did. Now maybe I can try and prove him wrong. Maybe it would work to our advantage if we stuck together in this foreign place, wanna form an alliance to see if we can find a way out of here?”

[Weiss Schnee]

Weiss put a hand to her aching head, as she half-walked, half-stumbled through the nexus.

Finding her way back from the frozen fields had been agonizing, finding her way through the icy region with numerous wounds to slow her down, but luckily, she had the regeneration of a prime to count on, and the wounds the astral free-for-all had left slowly knit themselves together with the aid of her unnatural regeneration. She was just glad that the savage denizens of the frozen fields had mostly left her mercifully alone. Still… since then she’d mostly been wandering with little purpose.

Weiss looked around, forgetting any other recollections on past events as she saw a pair of girls or…

Well, one was definitely a girl. Traditional Mistral-style clothing, holding a mask that reminded her of a fox, and a petite frame. Her appearance immediately brought to mind her own mask, and the meaning that came with it, but it only took a few seconds of work to bring her reishi senses to bear and check for any residual mask energy. Nothing. It was just a cheap mask.

Weiss exhaled a deep breath she’d held in anticipation.

Meanwhile, the other girl was…
Well, part octopus. Weird tentacles, green, lacking legs, and… Octopus.
Weiss wasn’t exactly a biologist, but if she hadn’t just finished fighting a walking corpse, a demon with chains in his arm, and the largest man she’d ever seen in her life, she would have been pretty shocked.

Instead, she was just keenly hungry, and like she always had, she pushed that hunger down with a mixture of willpower and distraction. She took a deep breath, as she turned to approach the two. Neither of them seemed to be exactly hostile to eachother, but given the sucker marks she could just barely feel from a distance, it looked like there was some worry.

As she got closer, however, she managed to just barely catch the last bit of their conversation.

”-Maybe it would work to our advantage if we stuck together in this foreign place, wanna form an alliance to see if we can find a way out of here?”

Weiss smiled sadly. New here, huh? This was her first time seeing a prime fresh out of the fountain… and it was honestly more of a shock than she’d expected.

“There’s no easy way out of here.” Weiss stated as she came into view.

The tentacle woman nearly jumped high enough to hit her head on the fountain in shock, and the other girl reflexively snapped her mask back onto her face.

“Who are you! Is this your doing?” The fox in the hakama asked with a serious tone from behind her mask.

Weiss put up her hands. “Relax! I’m just as stuck here as you are! Just… probably for a bit longer.” Weiss added, hoping this wasn’t going to get violent just because she’d been dumb enough to accidentally surprise the two.

There was a second of silence, and then Weiss took a deep breath, extending a hand. “...Weiss Schnee. I used to be a huntress in training. Now, I’m just… here, I guess.” She added with a heavy smile. It wouldn’t have been like her to make the first move back home. Back in the day, she probably would have ripped the other girl’s head off just for accusing her of being responsible for bringing her here.

And that would have led to an unnecessary fight, most likely, and it would have leaded to a whole lot of cuts and bruises over nothing, at best.

She smiled softly. It was… nice to feel like she’d moved past that.

The other two didn’t seem totally convinced, but after a few seconds, she took her hand, shaking it firmly. “...I am known as Megitsune. Professional hero. Why have you sought us out, huntress?”

At this, the shy, cephalopous girl spoke up. “U-um… My name is Wisteria. Hero. Hero-in-training, I mean!”

Weiss gave the girl a nod, trying to keep calm. So, these were “heros”, huh? It seemed like maybe they were the huntress equivalents of their worlds?...Though given what huntsmen and huntresses tended to have to do, it would have been a terribly misleading name to use in her world.

“This place is… disorienting, and it takes a while to make sense of it at first. I’m just passing through, but I figured I could at least point you in the right direction?” Weiss asked with a nervous smile. Learning how to interact cleanly with people like this was not something she’d learned herself - a lot of it came from watching her teammates - and there was only so much she really managed to learn second-hand.

“You don’t have to take my help, if you don’t want to, but…” Weiss Took a deep breath. “You get to the other places - the rest of the world - by using those gates in the distance.”

Weiss pointed towards a specific gate in particular, one on the far side of the fountain. “That over there is where I was planning to go. It’s a place by the name of Camelot. It’s one of the nicer places here. Pretty close to the place I’m from.” Weiss added with a stressed look, as she struggled to define the place. It’s difficult to explain something to someone who may have anywhere from the exact same life experience as she did, to absolutely none, and yet here she was trying her best to do that. “...not many threats just wandering around. If you want to find your feet here, it’s probably the best place to go.” Weiss finished. “You won’t die if you go anywhere else, necessarily, but… At least one place here is a hot barren wasteland.” Weiss added, pointing towards the Ashen Steppes. “And I just came out of a place that’s constantly covered in snow and ice.” She added, pointing to another gate. “So I’d recommend to at least watch out for those ones.”

Weiss took a deep breath, after finishing, aware she’d barely breathed. good for you, Weiss, you just did the worst impression of a tour guide ever.[/i]Ruby’d be falling over laughing if she saw you right now![/i]

[Wisteria Blossom]

Wisteria's head spun, trying to adjust the new information that she was being bombarded by. Nexus. Omni. Hero Association? Girl? Mask! Sword! At least the girl, Yukika, hadn't been so hostile that she had taken out a section of Wisteria's tentacles before she got the chance to say anything. It was, unfortunately, a not-altogether foreign experience for her: people tended to assume that she was a monster of some kind, and more than once she had been accosted by an overzealous hero. Most of them apologized later, but not all.

"Camelot?" Wisteria repeated, looking to Weiss. "Like in the story books?"

The girl gave her a blank look. Wisteria shut up. She wasn't sure if she believed the idea that this was a different reality - all this could be explained by a particularly powerful psychic quirk, after all - but if it was, they might not have those stories. She lifted a lower tentacle to her chin as she chewed her lip in thought.

"Well, I guess if we're going to have an alliance, we should stick together," she mused at last to the fox-faced girl. Leaning over, she peered into the fountain. The bottom was as shallow as any wishing well, the clear water showing aged tiles an elbow's-length below the surface. She looked back up. "And I think we can trust her. She smells honest."

"Smells honest...?" Yukika repeated.

Wisteria nodded, and lifted one of her Grasper tentacles. Opening the bulbed end, she allowed the shorter tentacles within to taste the air. She put another tentacle to the side of her nose, and winked. "I-I have a very sensitive nose."

Yukika wrinkled her nose in turn. Weiss folded her arms. Wisteria faltered, then, lowering her tentacle with a blush. Weird, she admonished herself. Too weird. She decided that it was probably best not to explain how some of her tentacles could taste as well as smell. Even though Wisteria did not know her at all, she could already guess from first impressions that Yukika probably would not appreciate the idea that she had essentially licked her in their initial tussle.  "U....uhm," she stammered. "A...anyway... That sounds like as good a plan as any... I'm for it, at least until I can figure out what's going on. If there are people from all over in this place, maybe we'll run into someone from my world, as well."

After a moment of consideration, Yukika nodded. Weiss, for a moment, looked unsure, then seemed to regain her regal bearing. "Very well," she said. "I will accompany you. Let it not be said that I would turn a blind eye to those in need."

And so, after a moment to get their bearings, they set off towards the gate in the distance. Wisteria spared a look over her shoulder as they headed away, watching as the fountain she had emerged from seemed to dissolve, piece by piece, wasting away like sand in a high wind. Turning her attention back to the blank canvas in front of them, she glanced aside at the travelers that shared the road between the "verses."

They came in all dresses, shapes, and sizes. Wisteria herself was pretty used to this kind of thing. Quirks came in all flavors. They ranged from those that were invisible, to those that could transform a person into a ten foot tall, ambulatory block of cement. Or, in her case, a half-plant, half-human with dozens of tentacles. She glided along behind the two, leaving a faint trail of slickness as she slithered across the smooth floor with her many appendages, only occasionally tripping over herself, until they at last reached the arch. Every so often one or two people would exit the portal, splitting off towards the other entrances. Their attire was casual, but everything about the way they walked and the expressions on their face said that they were possessed of an important purpose.

Wisteria hesitated before heading through the portal. As she stepped onto the other side, passing through the sheet of reality like it was a finely stretched length of soapy bubble, her senses were hit with the change in scents. Where the Nexus had been void, almost antiseptic, Camelot was like stepping into the mountains.

Around them lay a circle of thick, tall stones. Ahead, down a long hill of browning grass that reached into a wide, cloud-shadowed valley and back up the other side, was an immense castle. Built into the side of a mountain, its rings of high walls encircled the white spires. "Oooh," Wisteria whispered under her breath.

"Minas Tirith," Weiss declared. "As you can probably guess, it's one of the highlights, here. I want to stop by there, first; take stock, see what's going on."

"Impressive," Yukika said, her tone grudging. She had her mask back on, and her voice was back to its deeper tone. Wisteria was reminded of a bat-like superhero that had once been portrayed in film - a man before the time of the culture of heroes that had concealed his identity, and had employed a similar trick.

She couldn't help but giggle a little. Whatever reasons Yukika had, Wisteria suspected she wanted to be taken seriously. So when the girl's head turned towards her, Wisteria coughed, and acted innocent. "That's a long walk," she observed, then sighed as she continued down the hill. "My tentacles are killing me..."