Merlin Hermes was walking along the hallways of the Po Bidau Mothership. He had been having a lot of fun around here.
Turns out, going around granting wishes was one way to stay entertained. Digestion was just a good by product.
He walked into the main library, holding a coffee mug in one hand and a book in another. Walking past one of the head librarians who didn't seem to register his presence, he sat down by himself and took a sip from the mug.
"Too bad I'm stuck fighting that guy. If only all of me could enjoy this." He said, absently flipping through the pages. Being a hive mind got somewhat annoying at times. Having 'clones' wasn't exactly how it was portrayed in a lot of stories.
Winston was each and every one of his avatars. Anything his avatars experienced and learned, all of Him learned it at the same time. Every single Him was the original Him.
This was especially True since his original body was pulverized when he died the first time against Phantaminum. At least then, he had the illusion that one of his bodies was still the 'original' body, as silly as the concept was in actuality. But now, not even that was a thing. Every Him was Him alone.
And that got annoying real quick.
More than Half of Him were busy fighting Phantaminum.
A lot others were busy granting wishes and tens of thousands were already in the city he had created for the advancement ritual to sequence 1, each leading a different life.
A handful others, scattered across the tower were being a pain in the ass for members of the ten family.
As such, with such a giant influx of information channeling through the hive mind at all times, it was a whole lot to take it.
Not to say it was overwhelming, far from it. Winston was a collection of billions of minds now. Each worm inside him was a different form of consciousness, all identical aspects of himself. Processing all the information with such a network wasn't overwhelming in the slightest.
It was just... tiring.
When he just wanted to relax, there was always another experience he was going through in the back of his mind. He was here sipping coffee, and he was also dying at the hands of Phantaminum. Somewhere else, he was running along with his four legged body, playing with a child who threw him a ball. The child who threw the ball was also him.
He admired himself in the mirror, waiting to go back home and show the dress to her husband. He played the violin in the town square and watched the children dancing about. He flew threw the air with his wings spread about and dived down to eat the rats that had crawled out of the gutter. He and he alone walked in a crowd of himself, but then they all stopped to look upwards. Where they saw, extending from all of his bodies was a translucent thread, connecting higher and higher and higher and higher, and higher still to somewhere infinitely far above, where three more of himself sat, donning the uniquenesses of the three pathways.
Winston, or rather, Hermes shook his head and decided to focus on the book.
It was a complex book about shinsu flow theory and baang formation.
He didn't need to study it, since most of what he did was instinctual, but he couldn't help it being a scientist back on Earth. So long as it deepened his understanding, he would read it.
He opened a chapter about current and counter current shinsu flow and stifled a yawn.
He took some more sips from his mug before he closed his eyes and began to count down from three.
"Three.. Two.. One..."
"Winstoooonnnn!!!!" A wild Po Bidau Tiara appeared around the corner of the bookshelf, almost making the entire, 10 meter high bookshelf fall down onto herself.
Her spectacles were uneven, as were her hair and her eyes burned with rage.
And quite literally, around her arms faint embers of fire threatened to burn the entire library to ashes; and Hermes along with it. Her usual white dress was somewhat improper, as if she had been running non stop and hadn't had the time to adjust her appearance.
The moment her eyes caught his figure sipping coffee, her teeth cluttered together, biting back venom.
If looks could kill, Hermes would be dead a thousand times over.
"Beautiful Morning, isn't it princess?" He gave her the gentlest smile he could muster.
But apparently, that didn't seem to work its charm.
Boom!
Crash!
The table toppled over as Tiara jumped at Winston and grabbed his collars with a vice like grip.
"Fuck you, you piece of shit! Who the hell leaves like that and doesn't even tell me they've returned!??"
"What happened to your language princess? You used to be so sophisticated.. well, I was... preoccupied."
"Preoccupied my, foot!" She paused after the 'my' as if remembering that indeed, she did have a sophisticated way of speech. But then, as if feeling that wasn't enough, she shook her head and stared into his eyes with lightly gritted teeth.
"Fuck you."
"Please do."
"..."
"..."
An awkward silence hung in the air, yet Hermes didn't seem to feel it. He had a smug, yet somehow innocent smile plastered on his face.
Tiara, her face red as a tomato got off Hermes' body. Only now did she notice that they had landed in a very... odd position.
As she got up, she noticed the head librarian peeking around the bookshelf. As her eyes met his, the librarian gave her a little thumbs up and disappeared around the corner.
Tiara only blushed redder.
"Ahem." Said Hermes as he got up and adjusted his clothes. He was wearing a white T shirt with a black tie and a grey sweater over it(the sweater had a cute bear with glasses drawn over it).
Her smile faintly at Tiara, his eyes softening as he looked at her. "I'm sorry for disappearing."
Tiara turned her back on him, letting out a cute 'hmph!'
Hermes approached and wrapped his arms around her waist.
"What should I do to have you forgive me?" He asked, softly blowing at her ear.
"...first get back to your own appearance."
Hermes chuckle and spun Tiara around. And sure enough, as Tiara saw Winston's face, an unconscious sigh of relief left her shoulders.
But then, as if remembering she was still mad, she turned her head sideways with a pout.
"Where did you disappear off to?"
"I was... trapped." Winston explained. "By Phantaminum."
Tiara's head snapped up at him, eyes wide with shock.
"Huh?"
"You heard me. The Riddle had imprisoned me. Before you ask, if was because apparently, he didn't like how I was 'meddling with a predestined story bound to play out in a certain way.' A bunch of bullshit I tell you.
"Luckily, I'm built different so I was able to escape."
Tiara looked to be at a loss for words.
"So you were trapped there for a year?"
"For me it was a few minutes. The plan was to keep me there for a hundred." Winston explained. "But as I said, I'm built different."
Tiara stared at his face before she burst out with a light chuckle.
"Yeah... yeah you are." Her head rested on his chest as she heaved a sigh full of relief. "Is that the reason he's back? Because you escaped?"
"Yeah. Don't worry though. I've got it under control." Winston replied.
"That's good."
Winston felt her hands wrap around his back, and he couldn't help but do the same.
Just then, before he could say anything else, his senses picked something up.
"Hey." He called out. Tiara looked up and met his eyes. "I do still owe you an apology gift for disappearing for so long."
Tiara shook her head firmly.
"No. You explained your situation. I'd be a bitch if I still held a grudge for it."
"Nah, let me do this." Winston gave a toothy grin. "Because I have just the thing to cheer you up."
...
Traumerei stood atop his warship, his green eyes narrowed at the cataclysmic scenery he was gazing at. The sky was blanketed whole by a mountain of bodies. Metallic debris and blood filled in the remaining gaps and amid all of this, Traumerie's beasts emerged and disappeared back into the ocean of bodies.
"Quite a spectacle." Khun Eduan said from beside him, taking a sip from his alcohol bottle. "But we still can't find that fucker... he's returned yet again to be a pain in my ass."
Eduan was, of course, talking about Winston. More specifically, he was talking about the Lovers. Winston had, at one point in time, made it his personal mission to troll all the heads of the ten great families as Amon. Eduan had been one of the first people on that list, and that little escapade had ended up in Eduan firing a shinsu black hole sphere in his own mothership.
Admittedly, it was a pretty funny moment, but it made Eduan hold a permanent grudge. Thereby, now leading to this moment.
"What's the next location?" Eduan looked over his head at the pale skinned silver dwarf, dressed in a clean black trench coat. The dwarf smile, "102nd floor is the closest."
"Shoot. Set the course and warp."
The dwarf was none other than Samuel Helmons. Winston left a large trail wherever he went. An ocean of fog overtook all available paths under his presence. Samuel Helmons was only using them to his advantage. While his original counterpart was busy duking it out with hundreds of thousands of Winston avatars, he would finish the stragglers with Eduan and Traumerei.
Or at least... that was the plan.
A bright light flashed, and the scenery outside changed.
The warships appeared above a large city, built atop a floating island. Skyscrapers piled up into the sky and the population went about their work. It was the sight of a normal city.
Save for the war fleet above it.
Eduan looked back at the dwarf, vying to ask him to confirm the location. But as he turned, the words died in his throat.
Samuel Helmons, the white dwarf stood still like a monument made of stone. Sweat beaded across his forehead and his eyes were stretched as wide as they could be.
Eduan suddenly sensed something.
He looked back the the city line down below.
There, at the rooftop of the tallest building, two figures suddenly appeared.
It was a man and a woman.
Eduan recognized the man immediately.
"Winston Heath." The name wasn't spoken by Eduan, but by Traumerei. It was as if the name he spoke was laced with venom. Traumerei looked on with a palpable rage in his eyes.
Eduan stared at the woman's face before remembering who it was.
"Po Bidau Tiara." He remembered her. He had wanted to take her in as a concubine but Gustang had firmly refused. It didn't help that she was just Gustang's writing so he had let the matter rest.
"Prepare for battle." Eduan's voice rang clear in the control room. "And open the front gate."
The glass dome before them split open. Eduan and Traumerei walked forward.
And then, they let themselves fall.