Tale of another world

Sat atop the stone porch of the headquarters, Parc stared off into the small field before him. Watching as Sayo, in all her glee jumped and ran around like she never had before. Many a time pausing just to drop her gaze down to her new leg, a slick metallic one. Jointed at the knee and ankle but lacking any moving parts further down by the toes.

Since they had gotten back Parc had the corpse of stylish working on her prosthetic as well as fixing up Najenda's into a better form now that he had access to the proper machinery as well as his old teigu Najenda had liberated from its current owner in the R.A for a few days.

Sayo's giggling ran throughout the field and into Parc's ears. Drawing a smile to raise across his features. Genuinly glad for Sayo now that she had this new pep to her. Maybe even more so than when they finally consummated their relationship.

She came to a pause at the centre of the field, raising her arms to her side inhaling the largest amount of air she had ever done since her arrival in Night Raid's midst.

"How's it feel?" Parc called out from his place on the step.

"Amazing! This is perfect Parc, thank you so much," She turned to face him, practically bouncing off the walls I her glee.

"Don't be, I'd been planning to get you something for months now, but things just kept happening," he chuckled, bobbing his head to his side, a request for her to come seat herself besides him. Which she did, nearly sitting on top of him with how closely she'd placed herself.

She was covered in sweat from head to toe, panting all the way down to her belly from just how much she'd been sprinting and how unused to exercise her body was.

Turning to face the sky, Parc spoke, "Sayo, do you believe there are other worlds out there? Worlds like this one, filled with life?"

Still panting, Sayo quirked her head giving Parc a confused glance. Confused as to where this question was suddenly coming from but answering it nonetheless. "I don't know. I've heard from an astrologist that passed by the village years ago that we have a bunch of worlds up there, but he didn't say anything about them having life on them."

A saddened look took to her face, "if there is, I just hope it isn't as terrible as this one."

Parc's smile softened, growing more solemn.

"Why do you ask?"

"No reason," he replied raising to his feet. Turning to Sayo to hold his hand out and help her up. "We should go, the others are waiting for us."

Sayo jolted, remembering how Parc had asked her and the others to meet up in the meeting room like the room was supposed to be used for. "Right, what did you want us all for, by the way?"

"You'll see," he chuckled and lead her through the hallways to the open meeting room, with a single red carpet running down the middle towards a definitely-not-a-throne-but-in-reality-a-throne between two windows at the back. The other girls all, already stood around sharing curious looks as to why Parc had asked them all to meet up here.

Kurome standing by the empty throne where Parc soon dropped himself down after letting Sayo take her place besides Maya and Eris. Wandering over the twelve women before him, finally taking in the sheer absurdity that they all belonged to him now.

'God if anyone heard that back home, I'd be called a sexist and a slaver,' Parc inwardly flinched at the notion. It wasn't his decision to go around implanting gemstones into women literally marking them as his.

"Make this quick Parc, I've got some last-minute preparations to get to," Najenda's foot bounced, heel clicking against the stone floor.

"Yeah, yeah. Give me a second while I try to figure out how to say this." He held his breath for a moment and said. "As everyone here's already guessed, all, well, most all," his gaze lingered on Najenda, "have a small stone on your bellies." All hands but Najenda wandered to their stones.

"Yeah, you told us it meant we belonged to you or something like that," Mine spoke up, a flush to her cheeks.

"And it does." He nodded, "but I never told you why that happens when we, well, do the deed." He leaned onto his knees, interweaving his fingers together. "I'll get right to it. I'm not of this world."

'And, silence. That sounds about right,' Parc thought in the pin drop silence.

"Huh," the first to utter a noise was Leone, "somehow, that makes a lot of sense."

"So Darling is of extra-terrestrial origins then? No wonder he was strong enough to bring me into this horrible state," Esdeath followed up holding her protruding belly with one hand.

A few other exclamations by the others following up while Najenda just remained silent, staring blankly at Parc.

"That's why you asked me if I believed there were other worlds, isn't it?"

Parc's eyes widened just a little to show his surprise at how well they were taking that bombshell of an announcement. "You are all surprisingly… accepting of that."

"It is… not really a surprise…" Sheele spoke up, "I've been researching people like you… I haven't found anything from anywhere saying there are humans able to turn into feathers… you being from another world makes some sense…" her words as usual separated by long pauses as she chose them carefully.

"Okay, and if I were to say I was from another reality?"

"How do you mean?" Mine jumped in.

"Literally, another reality. One where this world didn't exist in the physical sense. One where Honest, the empire and you are all just fictitious characters crafted from a mans mind."

Najenda frowned, "Parc, what are you trying to say. Because I don't think I like what your insinuating."

"Yeah I know. Let me just say, I barely know what's going on myself. I know a few things, bt the finer details are lost to me."

Taking in a deep breath, he began:

"So, where to start. A year and a half ago, almost two years ago I found myself in the northern lands."

"Where I found you," Esdeath added.

"And tortured me," he returned. "Before that, I was in a place called Earth, or, at least that's what my planet is called. To be more specific I was in a country called France following a lead on my search for my mother. Where I learned that she was actually still in another country. Japan.

"I was in my hotel room prepping my luggage for my plane ride back…"

"Plane ride?" Chelsea questioned.

"Basically, a giant air manta made of metal that flies through the sky and can help you cross oceans in a few hours." He answered for her before returning to his speech.

"But before that, I heard a voice in my head calling me a candidate for something called the Conquest system and before I knew it I was in the middle of a barren arctic forest in summer clothes with only my carry-on luggage with me.

"That's basically where my life in this world began. A few weeks after that, Esdeath captured me, tortured me, I escaped, wandered around for a few months, found Maya and Eris. Then Leone threatened me with death and the rest is history.

"It was around then I also discovered something about this Conquest system. It had proclaimed me as a Pleasure Seeker…"

"Sounds about right," Leone said amusedly.

"And gave me a mission to conquer two specific women, as well as conquer another eight and to kill both Honest and the Emperor."

A frown grew to mar Najenda's expression, "so you have been working for your own goals this entire time then?" it was obvious to her, now she just had the confirmation.

"Yep, all while helping fix this world in preparation for my departure. Or at least, I'm guessing departure. I haven't gotten any explanation about anything. So anything you hear about the system from me is just that, things I've figured out on my own."

"Departure?" Mine gulped, gaining a worried look. "You're leaving?"

He nodded, "As far as I can tell, yes. In the next few days, I'm only really planning on going once I've gotten Honest off his high horse."

"What about us then? You just mark us as yours and run off?" Chelsea crossed her arms growing an annoyed look to her face.

"Oh, far from. I'm guessing you all will be coming with me whether you like it or not." He could see their suspicion. "As I said, I don't know much about what's going on. For all I know time may freeze in this world and I get the ability to jump on back here every now and then. I'm banking more on the, you get brought alongside me to another world scenario I have."

"And you're just expecting us to drop our lives here and follow you?" Najenda crossed her arms, foot tapping furiously.

"What lives?" he faced her head on with his own cold intonation. "Your 'life' here is as a general in a war that has yet to finish. I don't consider that a life Najenda. If it is one, it's a horrible one. Of course I'm not expecting you to just drop everything, that'd just be arrogant of me. But tell me, just what does this world have to offer you, any of you?" he turned his eyes over the twelve, not bothering to look back to Kurome next to him who he already knew would be following him whether HE liked it or not.

"In my stay here I have seen nothing but horror, death, destruction, murder, rape and on and on and on. It doesn't end."

"That's why we're fighting the Empire. To stop all of that." Najenda said.

"Yes, you are. And the truth is things will only start to really change in years, in dozens upon dozens of years. You can bring in new laws, new legislations and the what not. But there will always be loopholes and mistakes that allow people like Honest to gain power. Even if they don't proclaim it to the world at large, there will always be people in the shadows who will keep doing whatever they want.

"All this war is going to achieve by the end of it is destroying the biggest fetid piece of flesh on a dying body. And maybe that will lead to the body healing. But just like the world, there will be an issue, an unfeeling part filled with parasites.

"I'm not going to lie; my world is far from a perfect place. We've had our own share of tyrannical powers. Hell, one of them practically took over half the world and became the ancestor for millions of people in less than a thousand years.

"And you know where he is? Dead in a ditch somewhere, a historical image on a wall, his empire dead in the dust torn apart and scattered into dozens of countries. A speck in the history of the world. Yet the world didn't learn, in my world, slave trade was commonplace, barely two-hundred years ago we had people tied up picking cotton on plantations. Nowadays, for the most part we don't have slaves anymore, but there's still countries that do. The inhospitable one, the ones that America, the wannabe god king of the world, invade with false words of being the 'worlds police' when in reality all they want is the oil in the ground and the labour of the cheap."

Parc's heated speech came to a slow halt, catching his breath, "My world has gone through lots of changes in the past, nowadays the only things the common man has to worry about is going to school and getting a well paying job. We don't have to worry about people like Honest or Ogre, or Zank, or even Esdeath." She certainly didn't take offense to that, that much he knew.

"But we've had the time to grow, we've gone through generation after generation to even get to that point. We've had insurrections that have changed things for the better. But it's still going to take time, and lots of it for change to truly come about for this one."

"So that's my offer to you really, I don't know what's going to happen when I leave. I don't even know if I'll be able to go back to my own world any time soon. But I want you all to come with me. To hopefully find some place better than this hell," Parc began to chuckle, "who knows, maybe there's a world out there with nothing on it and we can just build our own civilization from scratch."

"I'll always be by masters side," Kurome stated the obvious.

"Count me in, never liked this place to begin with," Leone said, the first in a line of confirmations by the girls after minutes of contemplation. The last to even utter a word being Najenda, her eye squinted, finger tapping along her arm before she released a sharp sigh.

"I was going to retire after this mess was over anyways. If its in another world, so be it."

***

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Aaaand, the only time I get into the whole, leaving the world thing is done. I'll only be referencing Parc telling tthe other future girls about his whole world travel shenanigans in short from now on to not get bogged down by rehashing the same thing over and over again.