I died. It was completely random and unexpected. You see, I just sneezed, and it seemed like a blood vessel had ruptured in my brain. Talk about rotten luck. I was so young too, I wasn't even thirty yet for god's sake.
Now that I think about it, it's strange that I can even think, right? How is that even possible? A pre-death hallucination or something? Who knows.
"Oh, you're not hallucinating, Emily. You're actually dead, but worry not! For I, the resident wandering ROB, have a proposition for you!" Some strange floating guy said while stretching his hands in a cringy pose.
"C-cringy?! Come on… this is supposed to project confidence and power!" He pouted at me.
"Sorry, dude… " I quickly apologized.
"Never mind, so ready to hear me out?"
"Sure, sure. Though I have to ask, why am I not freaking out? I'm dead." I asked him curiously.
"Because I don't want you to, simple as that. I've learned the hard way to suppress the fear of dead souls. Not surprisingly, humans are not that great at making choices when they are losing their minds." He replied with a shrug.
"Makes sense, I suppose. What are you, Rob?"
"What? I just told you… I am ROB." He replied confusedly.
"No, I get that, but what are you? A god or something like that?"
"I AM ROB! It stands for Random Omnipotent Being. It's a designation for crying out loud. You've never heard of me?" He flailed his arms around with a sad expression.
"No. So your name is not Robert?"
"...it is… but I go by Bobby…" He said very quietly. If it wasn't for the nothingness around us, I would not be able to hear him.
"A–anyway! *ehm* My proposal is this. I'm bored as hell in this omniverse, so I'm gonna leave it, but before I do, I want to screw over some people and that's where you come in. I'm gonna give you a system so you can reach my level in the future and travel to any world you want."
"And how is that going to screw over some people?"
"Emily, darling, please… You're a selfish bitch. Just by being yourself, you'll be screwing them over."
"Extremely Rude. What even is a system?" I did not deny his accusation, for it was the truth.
"Were you living under a rock?! It's the power of a gamer, no THE Gamer! Stats, items, quests, and so on."
"Stats? You mean like numbers, right?"
"Yeah sure, numbers."
"Then I don't want it. Fucking hate anything even remotely touching on math." I shot it down instantly. Who in their right mind would want to look at numbers all the time?
"HAHAHAHA!! A woman after my own heart! Well then, how do I give you the power of Gluttony and a Fairy to manage your power? It's more or less the same thing in the end." He laughed heartily and immediately offered another solution, almost as if he already knew that I would refuse the first one. Who am I kidding? he definitely knew.
"Please explain the power of Gluttony." I was starting to feel bad for the dude, I really knew nothing about what he was talking about.
"That one is super simple. Anything you kill and absorb will become a part of you, your power, and knowledge. As for that Fairy, she will mostly deal with combining and synthesising new spells or powers. It's pretty basic anime stuff, you know?"
"No, I don't. I know about Pikachu and that's it."
"...yeah…" he said with a faraway voice before he once again focused on me.
"That sounds good. I'll take it." The moment I finished my sentence, a blinding light enveloped my whole body, and I felt a comforting warmth in what I assumed was my soul for a few minutes.
"And here is something small to kickstart your journey. You'll like it, with your pyro tendencies and all." He pointed at me, and something shot out from his finger straight into my body, and I immediately knew what it was and how to use it.
"Ryujin Jakka? You gave me a fire sword? Hell yeah, Dude! Awesome!" I was giddy and got a little bit horny. Don't you dare to judge me! My doctor said it was a legit problem.
"Yeah, yeah, focus only on the fire sword. I also gave you the necessary body and Reiatsu to use it correctly. But before you try to set this void on fire and start flicking your bean, I would suggest waiting until you get to your starting point, okay?" He said with exasperation.
"Uhh— y-yeah, sure." I felt my entire face heating up in embarrassment.
"Anyway. You don't have to worry about survival, because the Zanpakuto alone should be all you need until you reach a higher tier of the multiverse. I'm talking DxD, Supernatural, Marvel, or DC.
But you will start in one of the lower-tier ones, so choose. Will it be Tokyo Ghoul, Game of Thrones, Twilight, or Harry Potter?"
"HARRY POTTER!" I shouted excitedly. Hehehe— Fiendfire…
"um… I can still go to the other low-tier worlds, right?"
"Emily, as soon as you leave this place, you can do whatever the hell you want. There are no limits." He said with a wide grin.
"Great! Then let's go." I nodded, mostly to mentally prepare myself. I was getting really excited for this.
"Calm down. I still have some info you need to know. Firstly, your Fairy will be waiting for you at the location when you arrive. Second and by far the most important, never, and I mean never, make deals with the Eldritch. They will always fuck you in the end."
"Right. I'm not fond of tentacles." I said with a shiver. I've seen some 'stuff' on the internet.
"Your loss." He shrugged, and my brain halted.
"Wait, what?"
"Oh, nothing at all! Time for you to go! Sayonara, Flame Pervert!" He grinned while waving his arm in the air, making me disappear from the void.
"Nyarly! Darling, how about a last deal, for good times' sake?" Bobby called expectantly into the void.
—
The transportation was done in an instant. I don't think I even blinked. One moment I was in that void and now I'm in… oh, boy. THE graveyard? You know which one. The one where Tommy Boy will be resurrected.
"Hello!" A sweet, honey-like voice came from behind me, and I turned around so fast, I got scared for a moment that I would slip a disc or something.
"Heya! My fairy, I presume?" I asked the cute young woman with red hair wearing a red outfit.
"That's me! I'm called Pyra. Bobby already gave me all the info about you and my role, so feel free to ask me anything." She said with a cheerfulness that did not fit our surroundings, you know, them being a graveyard and all.
"Pyra? Please tell me you got fire powers too!"
"I sure do! I'm something called an Aegis or a blade. Normally, I would need a person to bond with, but when Bobby came to my world, he did some strange mambo-jambo and now I don't have to. I wield myself, as weird as it sounds, and I got heaps of other powers too!" The girl, Pyra, happily rattled off.
"That's very nice of him, and we can talk later for however long we wish to, but right now, we need to wait for a Dark Lord to resurrect."
"Why wait that long? Just kill that ugly fetus and absorb it. Wouldn't that accomplish the same thing?"
"B-but I want my entrance into this world to be cool…"
"Aren't you a bit old to be showing off in front of a fourteen-year-old boy? How about you kill that thing when they show up, and then have your cool moment storming the Wizengamot and killing all the Death Eaters there?" She gently, very gently told me a way better plan than what I had in mind, and I was not sulking, I swear.
"Fine. But I'm taking over Azkaban in the future. "
"You want it as a base?"
"I do. The building itself is perfect, in a scary sort of way. Do you think Abortemort knows any large-scale repairing spells?"
"Dunno. You'll find out soon. They're here." Pyra said while pointing to a spot in the middle of the graveyard. Lo and behold, they were really there. Wormtail, bleh, the man was truly the living embodiment of his nickname, and the less said about Voldy, the better.
"They don't see us?"
"Not for now. Just shunpo behind Pettigrew and stab him, right in the head, preferably."
"I don— Oh, I do know how to do that. Thanks, Bobby." I mumbled to myself.
"*pft* I know you know. Now, chop chop get stabbin!" Pyra said while clapping her hands, and I did just that.
I used shunpo, and it felt like I've been using it my whole life. No discomfort was present as I've traveled at such an inhuman speed. To me, it was akin to taking a normal step. Weird, but eh. I can't complain.
I appeared right behind the ratman quickly and, with trained precision, stabbed my katana forward, driving it straight into the back of his brain. There was almost no resistance, it was like stabbing the air.
A wet gurgle came from Pettigrew right before he went stiff and pissed himself while still impaled on my sword.
Ugh, that's disgusting. I pulled the sword out, and the man and baby Mort fell to the ground.
"Bleh… So people really do shit and piss themselves when they die. Hmm?… It looks like a lot more screws are missing in my brain than I, or even the doctors realized. Um, Pyra? Did Bobby mention anything about that?" I asked, turning to look at Pyra.
"He didn't go into much detail, he just described you as, and I quote "She is fucked up in just the right way to make it" besides that, he said nothing else about it." She answered with a shrug, and to my surprise, there was no judgment present in her voice.
"Huh. While that's not a nice thing to say, I guess he must have had a reason he chose me, of all people." I saw no reason to dwell on my lack of a reaction. It just meant I didn't have to go through some kind of angsty character development and break down at the most inopportune time. I just shrugged my shoulders, seeing no reason to dwell on that.
I looked at the heap that was Voldemort and kicked it over. Time to kill the Dark Lord.
"Sup, Tommy! You're gonna die today. Scary, right?" I grinned at the abomination and stabbed down. The thing let out a piercing shriek as it passed, black mist forming above its body shaped like an adult Voldy.
"Absorb"
I called out instinctively, and the black mist, AKA Voldy, turned into a white light, swirled around me and Pyra for a bit, and then went right into me. Whatever it was that I was mentally preparing myself for didn't come. The power became my own, and the knowledge was immediately slotted into my brain, as if it were always there. I got all of his knowledge, but the power was still split in his Horcruxes.
"Holy hell! Say what you will about the dude, but he was like super smart. This gluttony thingy is pretty neat."
"Neat… uh— it sure is. So what now? Are we going to leave or?" Pyra asked curiously.
"Nah, we're waiting for Harry. I'll be taking that Horcrux in his forehead. The Zanpakuto should be able to exorcise it, correct?"
"It will, but you'll have to be quick about it, as the soul will start departing into the afterlife if you do it the Shinigami way."
"Oh? So that's the name of what he made me? Sounds Japanese, what does it mean in English?"
"It means a god of death, but then again, the Japanese call a lot of beings gods even if they are not one, and the Shinigami are not gods, just overpowered ghost cops. "
"Hmm… Cool, I guess." I didn't know what else to say. This was all foreign to me.
"Wait, I have a question. How do you even know all of this?" I asked and gestured wildly around me.
"If I said Akashic Records, would you understand?" Pyra asked skeptically.
"Yes! I know what that is. That stuff is real? I thought it was just some nonsense made up by occultists."
"huh?! o–okay, Whew… Glad I don't have to explain that one. Anyway, when you get a new power, the records give me all the information about them. Where they came from, how to correctly use them, and how to make them better and/or more efficient." I saw her eyes bulge out at my admission before she answered my question.
"*pft!* So you're a living encyclopedia?" I snorted, but Pyra just gave me a deadpan look.
"Yes, I am. You didn't want a system, so this is what you get instead."
"Hey, hey. I'm not complaining!" I said with a grin.
I picked up Voldy's wand and absorbed the almost nonexistent power of Wormtail before I sat down underneath the creepy statue of Riddle senior.
I patted the ground next to me, motioning for her to sit. With Pyra watching, I went and tried to cast a lot of the spells I had gained the knowledge of, and just like with the shunpo, it was as if I had always known how to do it.
We then spent the next half an hour talking about anything that came to our minds. Well, it was mostly just me bombarding Pyra with question after question. I was honestly pretty curious about the girl. She agreed to be stuck with me for a long time, and I wanted to know why.
Turns out, she was bored at home. Bobby came to their world, looking for something called the Conduit or Zohar, and while at it, he saved the world and then together with her explored it fully, that was all done like last year, as he needed that thing's infinite energy to breach the boundary of the omniverse and leave.
Pyra enjoyed their little adventure and wanted to explore the universe too, but with Bobby leaving, Emily became her ticket for just that, an endless adventure.
"They should be here any minute now. Are you going to talk to Harry?" Pyra nudged me with her shoulder and asked.
"Of course I will." I said, and the next moment I felt the magic, yeah, I could feel magic now, stir as something went through the wards surrounding this graveyard. Harry was here, and I guess Cedric too.
"Stupefy!" I immediately stunned Cedric before he could take a single look at me. Though the red beam made my presence known to Harry, because the boy, and he really was just a kid, spun around and pointed his wand straight at me.
"WHO ARE YOU?!" He yelled with a hint of fear in his voice. Now, I was not going to reply just yet. I wanted to get the piece of Voldy out of Harry. So I shunpoed right in front of him, and bonked his scar with the pommel of my katana.
Maybe I miscalculated a little? Because as soon as I hit him, he crumpled to the ground and started yelling in agony. His scar split his forehead open from his eyebrows all the way to the hairline, but it was working. The same ugly black mist was slowly seeping out of Harry's head and started gathering above. The kid saw everything, obviously.
"Absorb" I called upon my power as soon as his scar was free of the soul piece and absorbed it, and unlike the first time, this time I got no new knowledge, just power.
"Episkey." After I was done, I tapped Harry's forehead and stopped the bleeding.
"Ugh— What did you do to me?!" The kid spat out with vitriol and quickly went for his wand.
"Unless the next words coming out of your mouth are Avada Kedavra, I suggest you drop the wand." That seemed to stop him from acting for a brief moment. A moment that was enough for me to disarm him completely.
"Expelliarmus." I cast the disarming spell with a lazy wave of my wand and caught Harry's wand when it shot out of his hand.
"*clap* Now then, seeing as you're completely at my mercy, I suggest you sit down and listen, kay?" Begrudgingly, Harry had to oblige my request.
"I'm going to tell you a pretty neat story, yeah? The main character is named Harry, and the bad guy is coincidentally named Voldemort too! So sit tight, and no questions until after I'm done."