2 The Darkness Looks Back (redux)
A well-dressed and rather young-looking man sat scared and shocked at what he was seeing.
Eyes - hundreds of thousands If not millions of eyes stared at him with a strange hunger. All with different sizes and eye colours, all just staring at him. He didn't know what to do. No matter where he looked all he saw in the surrounding area was pitch blackness. He didn't know how he could still see the eyes perfectly clearly even though there was no light source to be found anywhere.
At first, he was going to ask if it was some sick prank played on him by D Corp. They were always asking will their asinine and frankly absurd requests. However, it's not as if there weren't other corporations that were worse than D Corp when it came to their requests within the City under the Rainbow. And this is coming from someone from S Corp. Oh if his coworkers could see him now.
Although...
He was pretty sure that his plane to the City in the Sky crashed. Taking a deep breath, or what would constitute a breath here, he forcefully calmed himself down.
...Strange... I'm pretty sure I'm dead...
The man squinted his eyes as he looked over the area once more, absently minding the near-endless amount of eyes that watched his every move with an unknown determination.
Or rather... maliciousness.
This... can't be the afterlife. There is simply no possible way that this is the afterlife. A growing feeling of disgust made itself known on the man's previously emotionless face. Not in any religion documented by H Corp has the afterlife looked so... drab.
The man shook his head a little dismissively. ...Granted religion isn't exactly a credible source of the afterlife given the lack of first-hand experience.
Suddenly a tear opened up from some of the eyes snapping the man out of his thoughts. Revealing various sharp blood-stained and bloody teeth made themselves known. There were rows and rows of these bladed teeth. Ready to tear him to with an eagerness he neither cared for nor feared.
The man was surprisingly rather calm looking at the various moon-slicing daggers that at any moment would rip and tear his flesh from his bones with little resistance. He was already dead. There wasn't any point in resisting the inevitable.
And although he was prepared for what he believed to come next, he didn't anticipate what happened next.
"Look we're gonna cut this short since I've got shit to do, you're gonna spin this wheel that's gonna decide the ability you're gonna be given." As soon as... they spoke a ginormous roulette wheel made itself known next to him. It was strange, he would have noticed it before. Guess they're something with a large amount of power and control over reality...or maybe lack thereof given my situation.
"Then you can choose where you'll be reincarnated." The eyes said in unison; none of them sounded like they came from the same source. They all had different voices and accents. Some that sounded completely inhuman and alien.
The man didn't fully understand what was happening. Though whatever was going on he knew he had no hope of getting out of it. With him being dead and all.
He didn't want to further piss off the strange entity given it was in a bad mood so he did what it asked and walked up to the strange, floating, massive wheel and pulled a level on what he could only guess was the floor. As the wheel spun he decided to ask the eyes a few questions.
"So...what's your name?" The man asked with a slight pause.
"...Serahite" Sare-ite... odd pronunciation and even stranger name. Though it's not like I'm one to talk.
"I...see" The man said with slight hesitation, not wanting to unnecessarily upset the being.
Suddenly one of the eyes appeared in front of the man, its teeth still dripping with blood as a thick, rusted metallic must engulfed the man's sense of smell enough to make any lesser man gag. Though if he were someone who wasn't accustomed to such a thing he would - without certain, have thrown up if not for the lack of food in his stomach.
"That better not be a pun or we swear to god we'll flatten you like a steamroller over cement!" Serahite said in a rather annoyed voice. They must have gotten this a lot.
"No, no." He shook his head slightly. "No sort of joke I promise you. I was shocked that you responded to me much less have a name." The man looked to the side and observed the other eyes. "Though it's more of you not responding to me." He said simply.
The man stepped back trying to get away from the smell.
"Well that's quite rude of you, but we do understand that from your feeble mindset things such as reincarnation are far-fetched." The eye shook itself side to side while looking downwards. The man could hear what sounded like... pity? In its voice.
"But to assume that we do not have a name is so inconceivable that one can only wonder if it came from the mind of someone with so little intellect, that it's a wonder how their own body can even function."
The man didn't say anything else and just focused on the wheel as it slowly but surely came to a halt. Since the wheel was so big Serahite had to rotate the wheel a full 180 to allow the man to even see what the result would end up being.
"I've got a question." He asked after a bit of delay.
"Argh, what!" The eyes asked annoyed. How it became so agitated so quickly, he had no idea.
"What the hell am I supposed to do with the abilities of a puppet?!" The man yelled in frustration. "What does that even mean?!" He didn't - no, couldn't even begin to understand what that meant. It could mean any number of things. And was that word beside it? f-n-a-f? What does that even mean?
"Don't know, don't care, chose your world and leave me be." The eyes responded indifferently though the man could tell there was a growing anger bubbling under its calmness.
Sensing this the man knew that if he pressed further Serahite would by all counts make the man's new existence a living hell, even before he reincarnated. And that was if it even got that far given that up until now there had been no sign that Serahite wouldn't kill him if it saw fit.
...Or would the term be, erase him given that he's already dead?
"Can I least create and control some thin steel-like string given the whole puppet motif this thing's got going on?" The man asked while giving the wheel a death glare.
"If It gets you to leave quicker then fine." The many eyes responded, barely paying attention to him now. Not a second later, all of Serahite's eyes dilated and shrunk as some form of realisation hit them. "...Fuck!"
The man jumped back in shock reaching for a sword on his hip. He knew it wasn't there, he checked his body moments after arriving here and yet there it was - though when he had tried to draw it from its hilt he felt his hand phase right through it.
What? How? When did you...?
...
...I see... even in death you follow me... heh... what an idiotic move you've made. Wait, no you aren't here, not fully... not yet. Odd, didn't know you could do that.
Back to the subject at hand though; he didn't expect Serahite to yell like it did, nor did he expect what was to follow. If he was being honest he would have Serahite to attack him or disappear to leave him here while it did with...whatever had gotten it like this.
A sigh escaped all its mouths simultaneously before they all looked at him once again. "All right I'm gonna run through a few things." They said rather annoyed. The man knew that he hadn't done anything that could have set off the eyes at least not like this. Make them a little annoyed? Yes. But again, not like this.
"If any damage befell your mask you will feel it and it WILL hurt." They heavily focused on the word 'will'. "There are other things but you can figure them out on your own, now choose where you'll be reborn."
...
...
...Well that was certainly a few things.
The man tried his best to think of a place to go. He had absolutely no idea anywhere that would fit. A few ideas were based on things his coworkers had talked about. But that was about it.
Though after a few seconds of proper thought he chose one place where, if his memory served correctly, he knew that his new appearance wouldn't be out of the ordinary, even if he would be looked down upon. Though he wasn't sure if that information was correct or not. He never really listened to his coworkers during their breaks.
As the man disappeared into particles, he noticed how the world around him shifted and cracked as the eyes clustered together. As more of his "body" disappeared he felt more and more light-headed before blacking out but not before noticing the millions of eyes congregated together and heading towards what he could only guess was a table as many other strange creatures walked and flew around.
------
The man woke up feeling quite, for lack of a better word, strange. His body felt completely natural yet alien all at the same time.
He couldn't move, and any attempt to move was quickly rejected by his body - quite literally. His body was actively going against his wishes. It was only when he felt a strong force descend upon his back that he realised he was somewhere completely different from the dark void he was moments ago.
And now he was hearing voices. At first, he didn't know what the people saying though, but after a few seconds, he could understand what the voices were saying. Strange, though not the only thing strange about this body.
"I apologise for slapping your child's back Mrs Nanari, but I had to make sure that he was breathing properly." A masculine voice said rather close to his position. From what he could gather based on his situation he was being held by a doctor.
"As long as he's alive, that's all that matters."
The man, or rather boy now began to ignore the voices as he wasn't bothered by what they were talking about. Sure it was a little unnerving to hear that he was born without a heartbeat but it's not like they would get one from simply slapping his back. Given the nature of his body and all.
He didn't even care that he'd just been hit as he couldn't feel it, he wasn't even paying attention to his surroundings at all, not like he could've with his blurred vision, he didn't care that he was being examined as he could barely feel their hands.
No.
What he did care for was the nature of his body.
The moment he was born he noticed it for it was simply too prominent to ignore.
His body hated humans. It hated them with an instinctual hatred. And a personal one all the same. It mocked them. Despised them. Loathed them. Wanted to rule them. Wanted to see their ruin - to be the cause of their ruin.
And yet, it cared for them all the same. Or rather, that side of him only cared for the children. The adults - or rather those over a certain age held no feelings for them.
Now this on its own wasn't that big of an issue. He was fine with his body having such a dangerous disposition. No, what really put him off was how it was affecting him.
To put it into simple terms, he was feeling what it was feeling. Those emotions, that hatred, that disgusted. It was as if he was bathing in it.
And it was only a matter of time before it began to change how he interacted with people. Although. If he was a completely fresh existence, then things wouldn't be as nice as he's making it out to be.
A person born with this body wouldn't have any kind of protection against its nature as he does, and as a result - to put it simply - would end the world trying to understand its own contradicting feelings.
A being of what most would call pure evil. And yet given its own lack of self-awareness it would never realise this.
------
Dr. Kyudai couldn't believe what he saw, he had seen many mutation quirks in his life but none like this. The child was unnaturally lanky with three buttons on its chest, its body was pitch black with nine white stripes on its legs, reaching just above what he theorised to be its knees and five white stripes on its forearms. It had three fingers instead of the usual five on each hand which wasn't necessarily uncommon but it was odd to have three. And its face, or where its face should be was that of a mask with red lipstick and cheeks, a wide smile, and purple tears that run down from its eyes to the mouth.
Out of all of this, Kyudai was interested in the fact that the boy didn't have any eyes, he wondered if the boy would be able to see at all, he wondered how he would pick up things and how he would walk since his legs ended in points instead of feet.
The doctor pitied the boy for being born like that since his parents didn't have quirks that could have mutated into what he saw before him, one could create nearly see-through and sometimes intangible threads, while the other was able to float.
Kyudai didn't know what to tell the infant's parents, as the infant didn't have a heartbeat yet it was clearly alive given how it was moving.
How could he even conduct a proper examination on the child if it didn't have a heartbeat to pump blood to the rest of its body? This is of course to say that the child even had a heart in the first place - which It didn't.
Hell, Kyudai didn't know if the child had a face behind the mask but given the child's strange biology, he didn't count on it.
Kyudai knew that while it is uncommon, it is possible for mutant quirks to give their users additional organs and muscles. And yet, not once had he come across one that took away organs and muscle as the human body needed them. Key word, needed. Though it was obvious even to him that the boys didn't.
And while it is true that there's still much to be learned about quirks, a quirk that takes away something that the body needs to function at all has not yet been seen... well until now.
Kyudai sent back the infant to its parents but informed the doctor to inform the child's parents that they needed to monitor the child's behaviour and health and to report any abnormalities to him.
