Promotion to Senior

"Um….Good afternoon, Mr. Bernard." said Monday.

She stood in the Bernard Grocery Mart, taking things from her shopping cart and putting them on the conveyor belt at the cashier's station.

It was early in the morning so besides her, Kamil the owner, and a single old man who'd come in for coffee, there was no one there.

"Afternoon, Miss Tien. I see your boss has you out buying tissues again...I take it, he still has that 'cold' of his, then?" said Kamil Bernard. Smirking. His triangular fur-covered ears twitching slightly.

"Er….yes. I guess so?" said Monday. Blushing. At first she'd seen nothing odd about the increasingly large amounts of tissue that her employer sent her out to buy. Then Kamil cheekily started to ask why every fifth trip to buy tissues included the purchase of a small bottle of lotion.

Monday might have been a little naive on certain matters, but even she could understand what the shopkeep was implying. The innuendo turning her pale visage a bright tomato red.

"Alright, and that'll be 32.41. So, how's life?" asked Kamil

"Um….Good? Life's good." said Monday. Holding her phone over the scanner.

She actually meant it too. Since her brief lapse of control after finding out what had been done to her family, and essentially selling herself to the marchen for the sake of getting revenge, it had been a tumultuous year and a half.

Adjusting to life outside her gilded cage had been difficult, but the kindness and patience of her employer had made things easier. His laid-back manner reducing the pressure she might have felt otherwise.

He was a bit 'odd', but the man seemed to follow the same philosophies that her mother had always followed. Answering loyalty with loyalty, sincerity with sincerity, kindness with kindness, and treating those who were closest to her as if they were family.

The aftermath of their first hunting trip together had lead to the destruction of thirty-two realms, and had left her employer an insensate mess. His body had been reduced to a raw lump of cosmic chaos. A mass of stellar materials and magical energy that had been given physical form.

Monday had just spent the last eight months nursing the man back to health. Desmond's body would shapeshift in unpredictable, often dangerous ways. Sometimes he'd briefly surface from his unconscious state and with eyes that glowed with the fiery light of creation, he'd speak her.

Most of what he said was nonsense, the incoherent babbling born from his addled brain. Other things he'd said however….Some of them were plainly terrifying, things that would shake her to her core. Some of them, brought her to tears. Some of them, would make her feel nothing, a stifling emotional numbness settling over her as her brain struggled to deal with what it had just heard.

Add to this, the never ending parade of monsters and villains that would burst out of the man's closets each night, and it would be an understatement to call what she'd grown through while taking care of the man, a bit of an ordeal.

In the end though, her efforts were rewarded. Three days after he was on his feet again, Monday saw the return of something that she'd never expected to see again.

Monday woke up and found a familiar, translucent, blue window floating in her view. The type of window she saw almost every day when she played her games. The same windows that had been responsible for her rebirth.

The first window had been a message window, informing her that she'd earned the Zwielicht King's gratitude. Pressing the prompt on the window closed it and opened another window, this one informing her that she'd been made the Zwielicht King's right-hand.

A moment later she'd feel a wave of power washing over her. The black and white tether that connected her to her employer would feed her core enough materia to push her cultivation into the middle stages of the Empyrean Realm.

Strong enough to carve out a small portion of the distorted realms for her own use. Strong enough to take on an armed military battalion, complete with tanks and mechs, on her own.

Just as her cultivation finished rising, another window appeared. This window was even more familiar than the last two. The top of the window held the two words loved most by gamers throughout the world, "level up". The bottom of the window held the word "points" and the number ten.

Closing this window gave her access to a window that was essentially the identical to the character creation window that birthed her, sans the cosmetic options.

Desmond would later inform Monday of the changes that had been made to their relationship. She was no longer servant to a mere marchen. She was now in service to a higher power. The sovereigns did things differently. With the first key difference being in the rewards and boons they granted to those who earned their favor.

The changes didn't stop with just that.

No more than two days after her change in status, Desmond would appear at her bedroom door with something another young woman in tow.

A woman with a tall, broad, but curvaceous figure. Her skin was dusky, taking on an odd mauve coloration when viewed in a certain light. Her hair was a shaggy, long and light brown mane that turned a middling shade of magenta when viewed with the same light that turned her skin mauve. Her almond eyes were a striking, and bright, yellow-green, staying so regardless of which light one viewed her under.

Monday asked who the woman was, and Desmond answered that the woman was now Monday's junior. A possible left-hand that would be apprenticing under Monday, his right-hand, for the foreseeable future.

He handed the woman over to Monday, and then handed Monday a collar and leash. Two items that left Monday completely puzzled until the next night came and she woke up and saw a miniaturized dog-headed giantess looming over her.

The hooks and chains in her flesh were gone leaving only flawless skin and muscle. The spikes in her eyes were gone, leaving flickering yellow-green flames in their place.

After changing to another pair of panties, she'd go and demand an explanation from Desmond. Who would respond by shrugging sheepishly and answering that the woman was something that got 'caught in his teeth.' Later elaborating and explaining that the dog-headed giantess was the sole survivor out of those thirty-two realms he'd destroyed.

Monday's new 'co-worker' went by the name of Francis, Francis Hound. She didn't speak much and tended to spend most of her time in either her dog-headed or full dog forms. She likes her meat cooked rare, she liked to be taken on walks. She liked using the training rooms and making a mess of the training golems.

Monday had no clue what to make of the other woman. Despite the two of them being clear on the fact that Monday was supposed to be in charge, neither of them seemed to know what to do with that information. Francis kept trying to test Monday, trying to find the afanc woman's measure.

Monday just focused on sharing what she'd learned during her time working for her employer. Surprised to find that she was doing fairly well at resisting Francis' attempts to challenge her authority.

In fact, Francis was currently with Monday now. She sat outside the shop. Panting softly while in her dog form, an intimidating canine visage that could easily be mistaken for a domesticated breed of direhound.

The biggest thing in Monday's life that had her really excited were the projects or "quests" that her employer set for her.

Two weeks after he'd given her the task of training the new girl, he'd called Monday into his study and then asked her to handle two things for him. The first task had been one that she'd already asked for and had been waiting to receive the go-ahead to begin.

He gave her a budget that was surprisingly only marginally smaller than what the R&D Division of Otieno Corp was given to do their work. Then gave her access to a space in his inner-world that he called his "materials inventory" and a key to a workshop in their home's basement. A room filled with many devices that she was familiar with, and many that she was unfamiliar with but eager to play with. Then he gave her a list of things he'd want and a list of things they'd need, and left the rest to her to sort out.

From now on, Monday would be responsible for all their gear. Their group's equipment, armor, and weaponry would be up to her to design and manufacture, because she honestly didn't trust the things made by other creators and companies.

Once upon a time she might have at least trusted the Otieno Corp brand, but after the passing of her mother standards had slipped due to the usurpers who took Monday's mother's place, prioritizing profits over consumer trust and professional pride.

In any case, she was very excited to be getting back in a workshop and making things again.

She wasn't quite as excited about the other quest he set for her. According to Desmond, he was a sovereign, and all sovereigns needed a kingdom to rule over, whether metaphorical or literal.

Unfortunately, sovereigns appearently weren't supposed to run around doing too many big things on their own. A kraken in shallow in waters is quickly met and thwarted by other sea monsters, its peers displeased to see anyone else making waves.

A sovereign's status as a higher power made taking actions on one's own inadvisable because when one higher-power moves others will move to stop them. The most acceptable means for Sovereigns to act in the world of men was through the followers and servants pledged to their cause.

Which was where Monday came in, she, and to a lesser degree Francis, would be responsible for building his power, his kingdom. It didn't need to be a literal kingdom. It didn't even need to be a group that existed in the traditional sense. It just needed to be a group of some sort that he would be the head of. She would be in charge of running the group, and he would be the power behind the throne.

It was an outlandish request, but Monday was surprised to find that almost as soon as she'd left the man's study, a number of ideas started to come to her. Some of them coming from films, comics, and books she'd read. Some of them coming from the little voice in her head that was always asking what her mother would have done.