5

Stretching as I woke up, I slowly slid myself out of bed. A benefit of my new Monster physiology was that I was wide-eyed and ready to start the day when I woke up. I started my morning as I always did with a small bowl of oatmeal with heated milk instead of water and a small pinch of brown sugar and cinnamon.

Gently sipping the runny oatmeal, I leaned back into my chair as it brought me back to better years, years where I wasn't stuck in a crapsack world, years where my mother would make oatmeal every morning, and my father would grill bacon over the stove.

Shaking myself out of the nostalgia, I decided that since I had some time to kill for the first time since I arrived here, I flicked on the TV and started to see if I couldn't find cartoons of some sort. However, my channel surfing was broken by a breaking news alert; I froze and sat up in my seat as I saw a large campus made of glass, complete with glass statues.

"Fuck!" I swore, tossing my bowl in the sink and quickly shrugging on my clothes. As I stumbled through getting my pants on, I felt the warmth on the tips of my fingers as the Grimoire's energy built up; however, this time, the book did not expand, and the energy settled larger in my chest.

Darting out of my apartment, I shrugged on my hoodie, and with a brief focus from my boxers, I vanished and appeared within my lab near the ceiling. Swearing, I slammed into the ground and, coughing up a handful of dust, performed my routine checkup. Seeing everything was normal, I knew I had no more time to dither.

If everything went the same, Lung would recruit Bakuda, which could not happen. She had just bombed Cornell University, which meant she would be in Brockton in a week or two. I did not have a method to track her, and teleporting to New York held a strong chance of me appearing miles in the sky or halfway through a building. The chance to go off target increased with the distance I was trying to teleport.

Formalcraft could do almost anything with the proper rituals and power behind it. While the name Bakuda would work as it would work with Skidmark and Squealer, it was not as effective as using her name.

I could also try to make an item. However, Sorcery-Enchantment, while it could be potent at its current moment the, teleportation was at the edge of what it could make. However, a possible combination of Formalcraft and Enchantment could work.

I flipped open my Grimore and started looking through its pages for a method to locate Bakuda. After several minutes I had a bold idea cooked up with a combination of ideas. I would use Formalcraft to construct a Bounded Field powered by Skidmark's Shard, which would enhance the field by using the concept of Skidmark's layering his fields to infinity.

The second step would be to enchant my compass and link it to Squealers Shard, which in theory, would allow me to find tinkers based on the resonating of the Shards. This would, however, take upwards of a week to a week and a half, which leaves only a few days to find Bakuda and take her out.

I did not see any other options that left this as the best choice. I settled down after pulling out my knife, compass, and Grimoire. The next week and a half were tiring.

I pulled around 8 hours of careful drawing, dust-letting, and researching all to make an item that would connect through a tiny portal into a massive crystalline entity to track down something similar to it only in the eyes of the blind masses. However, belief had power, and I believed this would work; I had enough energy to sunder nations and the belief of millions backed by 30 years of mystical might.

A blast of energy rocked my warehouse, sending me flat on my ass, coughing as I waved my hand in front of me to clear the dust from the air. As the dust cleared, I saw sitting gently in the middle of the room glowing softly was a compass, the needle flicking wildly across its surface. The sigils containing the two parahumans were flickering; however, after a few long moments, they settled down to their almost constant white glow.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I walked over and picked up the compass.

-Vehicle, Efficiency, Modular, Queen_Objective, S&r@#e-

I dropped it as my head pounded like somebody had slammed into it with a jackhammer. Breathing hard despite the lack of need, I ran the names over in my mind. Vehicle was Squealer, Efficiency Armsmaster, Modular Kid Win, and Queen Objective was most likely Leet, and that last one, I had no clue who could bear that butchered mess of a Shard.

Slowly and carefully, I picked up the compass, focusing my mind on one power, bombs big and small ones that would tear and Endbringer to bit's transmutation, ones that would spread a man across a wall and leave him alive.

A slight pounding filled my head as the compass' needle darted around before settling north away from Brockton and slowly moving towards it. Swearing softly, I knew that Lung had Bakuda and was en route to the bay.

This brought back another issue: while I could take on a single tinker and wear her down, so she used all her single-use ammunition, Lung was beyond me. While most people did not know that Lung had fought Levithan to a standstill, I did, and it terrified me.

While logically, I knew it was only after hours of fighting, and even at the end, Lung gave up, so his Shard stopped supporting him. The fact that he still fought the testament to a single man's ego was still frightening.

Taking a few deep breaths, I let what I knew tumble through my head; while he was powerful, that was only if he had time to power up. Hitting him hard and fast would still put him down; his regeneration was slowed by venom, poison, and other similar things. That summed up most of my information about his powers.

I believed that my White Magic could hit his SOUL; however, that brought up another issue. I was a Monster, and he was human; a Determined child could slay the entire underground, and I was not a powerful monster. On the same note, if there was one thing Lung was Determined, while not powerful enough to travel back in time, he could most likely ignore the vast majority of his attacks while he ramped up.

A strategy I could use would be to use Hypnotism to knock Lung and Bakuda out. Prior to becoming a Monster, I would have had no method to do that before they holed themself up in the city. Now I was made up of magic and dust, which meant a single hit could kill me; it would also put much more mana than even the best Magus.

As I was musing, I felt the customary burning of my Grimoire; however, as an additional page grew in, I felt something bubble within my chest, and as I breathed out, I felt something my mind could as encapsulate as blue as it washed over the world around me out to a few yards surrounding me.

As I looked around, I felt like I was walking through the water as my mana drained rapidly. It seemed like it would take another hour to drain enough that the spell would run out of mana and end as I plucked my notepad out of my pocket and tossed it in the air.

I flew up a little bit before freezing in place. I tapped it, and it moved until I let go. A laugh bubbled within me as I saw the blue world I had formed. Time had stopped within my domain, reaching out fifteen feet. Time was mine, mine to freeze as I wished, and while reversal was beyond me, I could feel the potential growing slowly.

Dropping the time freeze, I watched as the notepad dropped to the floor. I slid on my bandana as my new mental clock hit 9:51:43:21:49:59, and I vanished from my lab compass clutched in hand.

I appeared on the outskirts of Brockton Bay; this time, I was lucky and only fell a few inches onto a rooftop. Looking down at the compass, I saw the needle start to turn towards me. Following the needle, I saw a small truck with a small Asian driver sweating heavily and would toss a glance towards the back.

Breathing in a breath, I appeared on top of the truck and, with a quick look around, saw that the street was empty of other cars save a motorcycle that sped up upon seeing my form. Breathing out blue, I froze the truck, its inhabitants in place. As my heart started to speed up I felt the blue start to slip away from me and realized that I had only around half a minute.

Humming under my breath, I fired a salvo of words at the top of the truck blowing the top in each word was a staccato on the blue, hammering it further from my grip.

I saw a massive bald Asian man with tattoos crawling up his arms; next to him was a comparatively small half-Asian woman with a scowl etched on her face. Focusing on the bigger threat at the moment, I fire half a dozen words at Lung.

As the last words spun into reality, my blue worlds shattered, and I reached out with my metaphorical hands, trying to grasp onto it. What I found, however, froze me, everything from the truck to Lung and Bukadu and their own blue line.

As the words slammed Lung out through the truck wall and he shot up a foot as fire exploded out from him, I grabbed his line and spread it out; as the line (timeline) expanded and grew thin, he slowed down.

Bakuda, however, had no such issue and tossed a small sphere in my direction; with a dismissive glance, I spread out the bomb's line and looked into the bomber's eyes, spoke a single word in german.

"Sleep"

The girl fell over as the truck driver slammed on the breaks. Flying forward, I teleported to the ground to the side of the truck. Grimacing as I realized what would happen if I hadn't thought to account for speed changes. Lung ran towards me, fire spilling from his body as he roared out

"I'll fucking kill you!"

His mouth barely distorted the words; however, my brief moment of inaction cost me as he was on me in a flash. His massive claw-like hand swiped through where I had been an instant before. I gazed upon him from the nearby rooftop. Looking down at myself, I grabbed my own line and compressed it as the world sped up.

Spinning dozens of words into reality, I sent them flying at Lung's flaming, nude form. Lung stumbled back as the words hit him; while there was no physical mark, he was hurt nonetheless. A grin found my face as I teleported away from a fireball he had spewed.

I danced around him, teleporting away before he could hit as the docks caught fire music left my throat as I sang my words, reinforcing my own high and pushing down at Lung like a physical force.

As he grew ever taller, my grin only grew bigger because while he could heal the physical damage dealt by White magic, the wounds to his SOUL would last longer. Hearing a siren pulled me out of the rapture of combat, of two people baring their souls to each other.

My eyes darted to the green-white emergency lights as my eyes spotted a man riding a blue and silver motorbike. My eyes bore into Lung's as, and with a musical cry in german, Lung stumbled before he started to shrink, power failing him as he slipped into unconscious.

I now had a hard choice in front of me. I could grab both and use their Shards for power, or I could grab one and let the other go; the last option was to let both go. As I heard Armsaster's(Efficiency) bike turn the corner, I breathed out a breath of blue and, as time slowed to a crawl, hefted Bakuda over my shoulder and crept away from the crime scene.

While my blue world would only last around thirty minutes, it would be enough time to sneak back to my warehouse. Forty-five minutes and another blue world later, I had Bakuda locking in a sealing circle. After triple checking the sigils, I took off my costume and started to head home. While today was tiring I had also prevented hundreds of deaths and gotten another battery for my Magecraft.

Powers Gained

Sorcery - Chronomancy (One Dot-Five Dots):

The magical power to manipulate time. However, it cannot divine information about the past or future, instead altering the flow of time within the present.

[1] The chronomancer gains the ability to keep track of time perfectly, detecting its passage

more precisely than any watch, and also sensing distortions in time as well as being significantly

harder to surprise.

[2] The chronomancer knows how to orient themselves in time to better perform any action that requires precise timing. This spell must be cast before performing the action.

[3] The chronomancer may now accelerate their own personal timeline, allowing them to perform actions and movements in what others perceive as a fraction of the time.

[4] Just as the sorcerer altered their own personal timeline, they may now affect the timelines of others, accelerating them or slowing them down, severely hampering their battle prowess in the process.

[5] This level of chronomancy allows its user to pause time in a small area, up to a square yard, for a short period. Under stressful situations, this spell can last up to fifteen seconds, while in calmer straights it can last up to five minutes. Anything that enters the paused area will also become frozen, though objects only partially within the area of paused time can be manipulated from the outside.