trans_9 | Some Heavy Reading [[A Bendytime Podpop Tale]]

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Some Heavy Reading [[A Bendytime Podpop Tale]]

Plunk.

That was the sound of a book hitting the floor.

A moment of silence passed.

"Damn... I lost everything."

The book pondered a moment. Almost the size of a person, five feet in heigh and three in width, it stood reasonably well-balanced on its lower edge. Lord Zetta -- or the Sacred Tome, who could tell any more? -- frowned. "And where the hell am I?  This isn't the space between worlds. Is this someone's idea of a joke?"

Yes, Zetta was speaking aloud. He did that. The most badass freakin' Overlord in existence was giving the universe a favor by letting it hear his voice. It could owe him later.

"All right!" Zetta snapped out into the alien surroundings.  "Front and center!  You want to play games with me? I'll come over there and kick you AAAH!" The book rocked as Zetta attempted to stomp forward angrily, but books don't have feet, so the endeavor was less that successful. He hurriedly rocked back to balance once again, looking down at himself. "Well. This sucks."

Death to the person who called his next words more hesitant. "Pram?  Mickey? Babylon?" Then, a little more sharply, "Alexander?"

[[Open.]]

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"Ah."

There was a distinctly un-startled sounding startled exclamation from behind him as Rein heard the book hit the ground and turned to find a person-sized, talking tome ranting to itself. She approached the book's back and stared at it for a few seconds. Trying to determine if it was a relative, in fact, but when she drew a blank on its provenance she finally formally announced herself with a "Hello."

Now we'll have some answers! "Who's there? I --" Zetta forgot he had no feet or... body parts, really, once again. The book twisted violently at its center, more flexible than an ordinary tome anyway, but certainly not enough to turn the way he wanted to. With a startled, horrified yelp, the book tipped over backwards, slamming into the ground with a heavy thump.

"You-you never saw that!" Zetta told the woman. But hey, at least he could see her now. "Who are you? What Overlord do you serve?" (She certainly wasn't powerful enough to be one on her own, right?)

Rein, who had quickly stepped back from the falling book and avoided an ignominious takedown, peered down at it with some amazement. It had a face!

She supposed it made some sense since it talked audibly instead of through dreams as she did when she was confined solely to book form, but that should be perfectly possible without the face, too. What a strange design.

Ah, right, it was talking to her.

"I am Reinforce, servant and Device to my Lady Yagami Hayate," she answered automatically. "But she holds no such title." She was still a creation of Belka through and through and formal protocol held much weight with her.

"Ah..." Her face softened. "Are you all right?"

"All right? I'm a freakin' Overlord!" Apparently in Zetta's mind this served as an answer.

He paused to consider, as rationally as Zetta was capable of considering anything, the rest of her words. "Hayate, huh?" he said out loud. (Again, total favor to Reinforce, letting her in on his thought process, right?) "That sounds like a name that belongs to a butler. In debt. If that's the best this world has to offer..."

The Overlord's voice took on a more direct tone as he addressed the girl properly. "Welcome to the best day of your life, Reinforce. I hereby appoint you minion to the great, all-powerful Overlord Zetta! Your first task as minion is to..." Well, there was no delicate way to say it. "Pick me up. Then, explanations! If you can do both at once there might be a bonus in it for you!"

"I think it's a very fine name." This was said with the almost psychotically even tone of someone who doesn't feel a need to argue forcibly on a subject of strong feeling because they lack even the slightest doubt of their own view to defend.

She considered leaving him there to consider the consequences of badmouthing the certainly-superior masters of people whose help he badly needed, but... it sounded like he was newly-awakened here, which might account for the brash behavior, and besides... he was a fellow tome. He must have some good points. And her name, too, demanded she help.

She kneeled down and carefully stood Zetta back up the way he'd been when she found him.

"You are on an interdimensionalspacefaring vessel, a sort of ark ship which holds people from many universes. We war against the Ohm, which the controlling intelligence of the ship claims have destroyed all of our home realities."

It wasn't in Zetta's nature to offer thanks for something so minor, but assume he was properly grateful. Deep down inside. In an appendix somewhere.

"A ship... an interdimensional ship. That means there's no Netherworld associated... nearby. No Netherworld... anywhere."

The implications staggered him. It hadn't been just HIS Netherworld, destroyed. Had burning the Sacred Tome destroyed everything? Was he this Ohm thing that the ship hated?

No. That made no sense. "The Ohm must have been the ones who tampered with the Sacred Tome!" he told Reinforce, inexplicably assuming she would understand this. "They didn't dare attempt to mess with me personally. Hyaa ha ha! That thinking may have saved their lives in the short term, but now their suffering will be only a thousand times greater!

"But I need to get my Netherworld back. Do I..."

Lord Zetta concentrated -- and in that moment his power became manifest, in a sort of over-9000 moment for anyone so inclined to sense it. No creature in the cosmos had more mana power than Lord Zetta! "Hyaa ha ha ha ha! I've still got it! I'm still the most badass freakin' Overlord there is! I--"

The power ceased to flow, abruptly. Like water in a clogged sink, it simply swirled; it had no outlet, no means of expression. "Oh damn! Books can't use mana! My precious stats! Hours of level-grinding! They're all worthless now!"

The book began to sulk a little.

He seemed familiar with the concept; he must have come from another realm with more limited interdimensional travel like her own Dimensional Sea. Overlords of Netherworlds... it sounded like a dark and chaotic place. But...

"Sacred tome?" She asked, circling around in front of him. Face-to-face, so to speak... if she crouched, anyway.

She started as, instead of answering, he started to accumulate mana. She couldn't imagine what he thought he was doing, but there was certainly a lot of it...

But nothing happened, except for a revelatory tirade on why nothing had happened. But she was pretty sure from what he'd said...

"You lost your body?"

"I lost everything," Zetta said. If he were anyone but Zetta, it might be called "quietly", but the overlord was pretty loud even when he was being thoughtful. "My netherworld, my castle, my brothers... even my own body... it's all gone." A moment's pause for thought. "How the hell did I end up like this? I was the most badass overlord in the universe, for Magog's sake."

Uh. Reinforce was still here. Don't show weakness, Zetta! He fixed her with a stern glare, though the underlying anger wasn't directed at her. "Pram the Oracle told me that my Netherworld was doomed to destruction. I see now that these... Ohm, must have tampered with the Sacred Tome!" Conveniently skipping over the part where he set the Sacred Tome on fire because it insulted him, he continued, "I had to bind my soul to the damn book to save myself -- and it.

"But that means -- none of the other Overlords got my message! How am I supposed to get my Netherworld back without their help?" Look out, Reinforce, Zetta is starting to get all fired up again.

It did not take tremendous insight for Reinforce to imagine how someone who thought their own badassedness insulated them from all injury might be in their pride laid low, but she politely refrained from saying so.

"Cargn did say that there are sites of significance from which the Ohm unravel universes. Perhaps your tome embodies one." Though that would mark, so far as she knew, the first time anyone on the ship had had any warning of what was to come. "We are all trying to restore our homes by working with the ship. If you cooperate with us you will have our aid. Mine, at the very least."

She nodded solemnly as she made the promise. Zetta could get as fired up as he wanted; except where Hayate was concerned Rein had all the emotional volatility of a glacier. She'd balance him out.

"Naturally. Hmph." Of course he'd have her aid. She was his minion now. "All right, then. I'm still the most badass freakin' Overlord in existence. Even if I am a little lacking in the arms and legs department. And I'm guessing there's no one of Overlord power on this ship-thing either. At least I don't sense any. Which means we can't just wish me up some arms either. Damn!"

Any Overlords on this ship would be so depleted in mana, with their own Netherworlds lost, that he'd never be able to coerce one of them into wishing him a new Netherworld. It'd take too much mana to write. But on the other hand.... They'd be much, much weaker than him.

"Hyaaah ha ha ha ha! All right, Reinforce! You've got... sentience, and feelings, and... things... I guess." Lord Zetta: absolute master of dealing with those he perceived as lesser beings. "So I can't expect you to carry me around all day. Find me some object I can use to generate a loyal battle-monkey, and then maybe we can start getting down to some good old-fashioned ass-kicking! It sounds like there's an enemy out there just on their knees, begging for one!"

He had, ironically, shown her somewhat more consideration than was typical, even if the way he'd phrased it was dismissive. She was a Device, after all, and a powerful one; most who had called themselves her master were solely interested in maximizing her usefulness to them.

"An object?" Rein didn't blink, but she was wearing the sort of vaguely mystified expression normally associated with that particular response to a question. Had she her own tome-body she would have had the ability to generate creatures, but she was of course wholly unfamiliar with Zetta's requirements. "Do you mean a device with that function or some kind of raw material?"

"Some item. Preferably something strong and durable. Something that won't be missed, too." Zetta would have rubbed his hands together in anticipation, but, y'know. "A bigass boulder would be great. Something rock or metal? Any sacred amulets lying about by chance?"

He hadn't caught on to her unusual nature yet. In part, it's simply a matter of scale -- as an Overlord, he was cognizant of thousands of different sorts of lifeforms. The other part was simple tactical blundering -- on the battlefield, either creatures had yellow hit point bars, or red. One got smashed, the other didn't.

"You could probably find some structural steel in one of the damaged buildings in the City." Rein offered. "And if you want something more delicate there is a jeweler on the ship, I believe."

She was curious to see what, exactly, he intended to do. Another interesting foreign magic to record...

"Bah! That would take too long! I can always make more later..." He looked around as much as his limited field of vision allowed. Terminals? Zetta was a progressive Overlord, unlike some of his more feudal compatriots. "How about one of those doohickies? They won't be missed, there's lots of them, right? Bring one this way."

"The ship would probably miss them." Rein deadpanned. "And it has very good internal defenses. I can take you to the city by transfer if you want."

'Transfer' had that capitalized sort of feeling like she was talking about something specific; in this case it was her teleportation method.

Zetta made a frustrated noise that defied easy description. "Of course this had to be difficult. All right, use this Transfer and let's get to somewhere where I can find some raw material!"

Rein nodded and the triangular diagram of her Belkan-style magic appeared briefly beneath them before the travel magic shunted them off and into the air above the city.

The air, because she had learned the hard way that there was a persistent distortion in the transfer paths she forged that occasionally led to severe inconvenience when one chose a destination too close to walls or other ground clutter.

She carried Zetta the rest of the way with flight, down to the partially-collapsed ruin of what had once been a large building. "Would something from here do?"

The book is not exactly light, but it seems to weight less than it should -- the difference between carrying a live body and a corpse, one might think.

"Hey, that's pretty handy!" Nothing compared to what an Overlord could do, but he was lacking in the ability-to-use-mana department, damn it. "Yes, something strong. Something durable! I can make a fine battle-money from this sort of debris!"

Rein searched the debris and found what she had thought of when he had requested a durable material. The facade had suffered far more damage than the building's core supports, but here and there major structural members, beam of some steel-like alloy, had come down in the larger collapses.

Her lights swirled around it, clearing away the lesser debris and cutting out a neat length of the beam, which she presented to Zetta.

"What is a... battle-monkey, exactly?" She was fairly sure it was just some euphemism for a soldier, but the more she thought about it, the more it felt like it might be a good idea to know first

If Reinforce really wanted to know first, she should've said so specifically -- not that Zetta responded to such things as "wait!", "stop!", or "are you really, really sure you want to do that insane, stupid thing?" unless he chose to. But she's getting an answer, delivered in that half-cackling megalomaniacal voice that only ~~Crispin Freeman~~ Lord Zetta could deliver. "What's a battle-monkey? THIS is a battle-monkey!"

A brief pause, just long enough to navigate a series of menus -- and then the steel beam exploded outwards in a Limit-Break-ish wash of light. In the center now stood a green-haired, cheerful woman. "Welcome, loyal minion, to the service of the great, all-poweful, supreme Lord Zetta! Gyaaa ha ha ha ha!"

The woman just smiled. Zetta addressed Reinforce without turning -- no repeat of that earlier disaster here. Not yet anyway. "It's just a matter of confining energy patterns in an object. The result, one more servant for my army! Biological and living, but she's only a construct. No sapience. Sorry, Reinforce, but I'm appointing her leader -- that will give her free reign to carry me around. If you really want the position back you can always wish for it! Hyaah ha ha!"

The woman moved forward, knelt, then hefted Zetta up into her arms like a living bookstand. Zetta considered his position for a moment, then grinned maniacally. "Perfect! Take THAT, Sir Isaac Newton! Your laws of motion are on MY side now! The fundamental nature of the universe is a plaything beneath my boot heel!"

The book suddenly paused. "Damn. I've got to get feet back, so that line makes sense again!"

But back to business. "Good work, Reinforce. When I manage to summon a factory I'll buy you a bazooka. In the meantime, now that I can move, I think it's high time I met with whatever passed for leadership on this yacht till I came around."

"Ah-" Rein was entirely too slow to interrupt his rant and stop him before he finished his rant and started the... process that converted the steel beam, somehow, into what looked like a woman. "So not a monkey, then."

She poked at Zetta's creation as her magic made other, more sophisticated examinations of its composition. By all appearances human, or something close... she couldn't see how the steel had even been involved. What a strange technique, indeed.

"Best that the honor go to one who will be at all times devoted to it." She accepted her 'demotion' gracefully, and waited patiently through the rest of his... joking. She was pretty sure he was joking. She hoped he was joking.

But... "A factory?" She perked up. For all its size and sophistication the ship seemed to lack much in the way of machine tools or chemical plants or other, more sophisticated tools of manufacture and fabrication for use by the crew. If he could really provide such a thing...

"Well, yes." Thrown off his rant-game, Zetta took a moment to recover. "I AM the Sacred Tome, now. This may not be my Netherworld, or even my private space, but a wish written in the Sacred Tome should be every bit as effective here as anywhere. All it takes is someone with enough mana power to wish for a factory and one will be created in their name. Then it can pump out weapons and armor for anyone to purchase!"

He eyed Reinforce. "Don't get any funny ideas, though. Buildings are... special. Anyone too weak who wishes for one will mostly likely sacrifice their soul to do it. I'm pretty sure if it killed you, I'd be blamed, and I gather that would lead to a fight with the ship. And that would leave you all frantically gasping for air in the vacuum of space while I laugh my way to the safety of the space between worlds, which would put a damper on the whole 'maniacal revenge' thing. So I need to get my constructs to build up some mana instead. THEM I can bring back."

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Some Heavy Reading [[A Bendytime Podpop Tale]]

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