The Boys: Greatest Supervillain (Arcane - Current World) (JJK ✓)

Getting my hands on what was rapidly coming to be known as Hex Crystals changed the whole ballgame for me.

Ever since I arrived in this world I've been able to perceive mana in my Room, but it was elusive by nature. It was just so… weird, so wholly unique, that every time I tried to grasp it, it slipped through my fingers like smoke.

In the end, it was an issue of perception. It was the difference between guessing what something might taste like and actually knowing what it tasted like.

For example, when people say something tastes like shit. Unless you had actually tasted shit, you had to guesstimate. You knew it tasted bad, but you were kept blissfully ignorant on what kind of bad it was.

Physically touching such a dense source of mana was my equivalent to tasting shit… In hindsight, I should have used a different metaphor.

Regardless, I had a foundation to work off of now and I was ecstatic to see where it could go.

"Pretty," I noted, holding the crystal aloft. I drank in its raw and uneven texture, noting the faint fuzzy feeling on my skin.

"I'm all on board, I'd have to be a mouth-breathing moron to pass an opportunity like this up, but I'm hoping that you two have a game plan?"

Looking away, I glanced at Jayce and Viktor. It was Jayce that spoke, scratching at his neck as he offered a boyish smile.

"We have a concept of a plan?" I cocked my eyebrow, less than impressed.

Viktor took over, "We know our destination, but the path there is uncertain. For the next few years, I was under the impression that we would refine mana crystals until we could place them into portable devices. However, your microfusion cell has been a point of inspiration -- now, I wonder if it would not be better to power them with a magical charge."

Jayce nodded, "It'd make them cheaper -- mana crystals are absurdly expensive. I felt like I got punched in the gut when I learned how much the ones in the Hexgate cost, and it's going to have massive upkeep costs since each use is going to deplete the mana in them over time…" His lips thinned, "So, the stones are only going to get more expensive…"

"Keeping them out of the hands of the people," Viktor finished the thought. "We would have been left leaving it to companies to finance, giving it to their workers to make their lives easier, but…" He offered a small shrug, telling me that it was a compromise he was willing to accept, but not if a better option presented itself.

I saw the picture they were painting as I returned the crystal.

"Then the goal is to make them useful, safe, cheap, and easy to maintain, hm?" They didn't really need me, I realized, glancing between the two of them. Inventing a storage device for magic was well within the realm of possibility for both of them, I imagine, given what they had already accomplished so far. But, inviting me into their inner circle so easily told me a lot about both of them.

Firstly, that they were impatient. They saw me and my tech as a massive shortcut, so they invited me in despite the considerable risks involved.

Secondly, they were just like Heimerdinger. They were inventors that created purely for the love of the game.

They weren't like Stan Edgar, or Mel Medarda, who saw it all as risk vs reward and profit vs cost. They had a brain child that they wanted to bring into the world, and they thought I could help with that.

"Ideally… yes," Jayce agreed with a nod.

"I think we could manage that," I said with a smile. "Though, admittedly, it would be helpful if I knew how Hextech actually worked." I pointed out, "I know it involves channeling mana through technology, but the whole process is rather vague. Deliberately, I imagine."

"You would be correct," Viktor noted, glancing at Jayce, who shrugged helpfully. "It is a measure placed by the Council. They… rather like the idea of being the only ones who can produce Hextech." He seemed almost ashamed by a pretty reasonable information control method.

"But," Jayce continued, "since you're already here, we might as well give you the full scope of things. Follow us, we have something to show you."

It almost felt like a trap with how easy this was, I thought to myself as I followed them into a side room. I was already aware of what was inside, but I still let out a low whistle when I saw it.

It was a dodecahedron looking thing, made up of small metallic pieces that each had an arcane looking symbol inscribed on it. The pieces shifted and bobbed in place, and I could tell it was in fact dozens of pieces rather than a single whole.

"This is the Hexcore," Viktor explained, and I could practically hear the capitalization. "It is the centerpiece of all Hextech, in practice."

Jayce was all too eager to show off what amounted to his baby, making asking questions almost unnecessary.

"It's inspired by an experience I had as a child -- my mother and I were on an expedition when we were caught by a sudden blizzard. We walked for a time, but that just sapped our strength. Both of us would have died if not for a mage that happened to be in the area, and he saved us with magic. He teleported us half the continent away, returning us to Piltover. A journey that took us months, done in the span of seconds."

As he spoke, he touched a manastone embedded into his wrist guard almost longingly. The mana in it was spent, rendering it inert.

Viktor smiled, "So began the obsession that nearly got him kicked out of the academy."

"Nearly," Jayce replied, a grin on his face. "But… yeah, more or less. The Hexcore is based on what I witnessed that day, further refined by my research into magic." As he stepped closer, he took hold of a series of dials that were before the Hexcore.

"Magic is both more and less systematic than most people realize. With magic itself being a catch-all term for anything that deals with mana, but there are about as many types of magics as there are fields of engineering."

He turned a knob, making the top half of the Hexcore spin. Then he turned another, making the middle row spin inwards.

"The field we have investigated most is runic magic. It's said to be the foundation of all magic, but I'm not sure how accurate that claim is. On their own, each rune has a static effect, but when combined with other runes, the effect changes drastically, all in proportion to the number of runes used."

Huh. "So, it's a language? Runes are vowels, consonants and what have you, with a whole spell being a complete sentence?"

Viktor nodded, pleased that I already got the gist of it.

"Essentially, yes, only the language is vastly more complex than a written or spoken word, and a frustrating amount of math is thrown into the equation. The effect of the rune is determined by its positioning in a three dimensional space in relation with the runes around it, in addition to runes in certain cornerstones that amplify the spell in question."

"There's that, and… well, we're not working with a complete alphabet here. Rune magic had a massive decline in the wake of the Rune Wars. A lot of fearful people actively destroyed anything that had to do with runic magic, and what we've managed to scrounge up is the result of expeditions into ancient ruins." Jayce finished, making me pinch my chin.

I understood it. The Hexcore was, in function, similar to the ritual that Tz had to go through to create a magic effect. Only it was more free form and required less preparation.

As far as a magic system went, it wasn't entirely what I wanted, but it checked off enough boxes for me to say 'good enough'. If nothing else, I could improvise with it.

"Sounds like a pain in the ass and overly complicated. How many spells have you managed to create with this thing?" I asked, leaning down to inspect the Hexcore as it warbled with fluctuating waves of mana.

The two shared a look behind me, which wasn't exactly a promising sign. It was Jayce who answered, "Uhh… two, technically."

"More accurately, we broke down the one spell we recreated into two parts -- the weightlessness and acceleration." Viktor corrected with a small shrug.

Okay, so that would explain why they were open to bringing me in. With fusion energy, I had created an alternative method of creating what they wanted to create. Only, instead of trying to hamstring me, they sought to combine our efforts.

"Would bringing in actual mages help?" I ventured, standing back up.

"Most likely," Jayce explained with a grimace. "If nothing else, they'd give us a blueprint to actually work off of instead of stumbling blindly in the dark. The issue is…"

"The Council is staunchly anti-magic," Viktor elaborated for his partner. "Hextech exists in a gray area for most of them, and they have gotten used to the idea of it. Once the results of the Hexgate, and hopefully more portable devices, start to show themselves, that stance will weaken."

"Which would take years, at the very least. Decades, even," Jayce groused unhappily.

"Hm. It also doesn't help that it would complicate things with Demacia," Viktor allowed. "If Piltover becomes a haven for mages, that puts the city in jeopardy. I dislike it, but in this case, I can understand their hesitation. I simply also find it quite frustrating."

Demacia. That was one of the Kingdoms to the northwest of Piltover. I didn't know much about it, but what I did know was that they hated magic.

In a 'the only good mage is a dead mage' kind of way.

Which, admittedly, had put them pretty far down on my list of things to pay attention to because they were actively suppressing the thing I was most excited about in this world. Maybe that was a little too hasty of me.

"Hm. And I'm guessing tracking down the mage that saved you is also out of the question?" I asked Jayce, making him sigh dramatically.

"More like we can't find him. I have a standing reward for any information about him, but in the years since… if he hadn't saved me, there'd be no proof that he existed at all."

Meaning that was a dead end too. A little annoying, but the difficulty just added to the fun of it.

"Unfortunately, if what we suspect of him is true -- that he is some sort of master mage -- then we have very little hope of finding him if he does not wish to be found," Viktor added.

Yeah, it was becoming more and more clear what a big part of their motivation for bringing me in was. They had a lot of roadblocks to progress in front of them, and they wanted me to help them skip the worst of them. And their hopes were well founded.

With my Room, I was almost certain that I could make a mana battery. Piltover might lose a few of its best and brightest to give me the knowledge to translate that to mechanical means, but that was the cost of progress.

"Well, that's most of my questions answered," I admitted. "Sounds like the best place to start is with the battery. And refining the crystals- not blowing up is always good."

Viktor nodded, "Very true. And the lack of explosions shall keep the Council happy."

"And off our backs," Jayce added. "Ideally, our first iteration of portable Hextech could be something like your Mr. Handy. Just… enhanced?" He added, sounded like he was wary of me getting touchy about my inventions.

I just grinned, "Sounds amusing. Let's get started then."

…

I was lucky that I had consumed so much raw knowledge from Fallout, which allowed me to explain stuff like vacuum tubes to the two. They were pretty quick to understand it, learning and adapting it into their own theories.

That first day, we didn't leave the workshop with a functioning prototype, but we did leave with a general direction to go in. Which, in turn, allowed me to turn to my own research.

Magic.

It was finally in my grasp, and I just had to figure it out.

That is how I found myself in the workshop that I had visited with Robin when I first began draining students of their knowledge.

Since I was certain that Asami had some way of detecting synths, the owner of the store was kept sweet with bribes. Leaving the basement free for me to play in.

"Magic is one part biological and one part wibbly-soul nonsense," I muttered to myself, flipping through a book as I waited for a synth to finish printing off.

As Jayce and Viktor had alluded to -- books on magic were highly restricted and were even outright illegal to possess. Except, naturally, the books that decried magic as dangerous and that those who use it needed to be properly monitored by the local authorities.

That wasn't to say that there were none in the city. There were a handful of books floating about on the black market, and with Yoruichi at my side, the strings to get my hands on them were easily plucked.

"So… best thing to do is get my hands on a mage and figure out how they do what they do," I muttered with a frown. Not impossible.

Ironically, Demacia was probably my best bet for finding mages. They had a whole bunch of mage hunters, and I'm guessing that they occasionally found one. I could pinch them from the hunters, bring them here, and I could see how they 'drank mana from the world' as the book put it.

The issue was time. Demacia was basically on the other side of the world, and while I could use the Hexgate to get there quick once I got there I'd have to find where the mage hunters were based and hope that was where they kept any mages they had captured before hoofing it back to Piltover the old fashioned way, which apparently could take months on its own.

And I was an impatient guy.

A beep alerted me that the synth was done printing off, so I snapped the book shut and set it aside as I stood up to inspect the synth, which was another one based on my DNA. It never got less weird looking at myself, like I had met a twin I hadn't known about. But needs must, I thought to myself, Shambling the synth onto an operating table that I then strapped him to. With everything secure, I dismissed my Room before uttering, "Amp-Room."

A much smaller Room established itself along the lines of the basement, enhancing my awareness of what I was fiddling with.

The soul.

"Sukuna said that the body and the soul are connected," I muttered to myself, already knowing that this entire experiment was probably going to end in failure, but I was only with taking the light bulb method. "And I already know that the synths have a soul."

I wasn't entirely sure what that light was when I used Personality Surgery. Was I swapping a person's soul? Was I just swapping their consciousness? I didn't really know, and that was the point of these little experiments. If that light really was the soul, then learning how to interact with it beyond Shambling it was going to be very useful. If it was just consciousness… still useful, but it could be the tip of the iceberg that would lead me down towards the soul itself.

Either way, it was worth experimenting with.

With the synth on the table, I started up the process of creating another and went to work.

The Amp-Room acted as a magnifying glass for that light within the body, allowing me to perceive it in far greater detail. How rather than a single light was more of a… kaleidoscope of hues and colors. Each hue corresponded to part of the synth's baseline personality, which was currently set to default. Red for anger. Blue for… hope? Pink for love… green for willpower… purple for empathy or compassion, yellow for fear, orange for greed. The intensity of the hue represented the intensity of the emotion, but in the synth's case the emotions were pretty faint and even.

Within those hues were other things. Other hues that I recognized. Pleasure lurked in Love, for example. Knowledge lurked in the gray of Curiosity. There were others lurking within, personality traits that defined a person in conjunction to larger emotional elements. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but it was worth noting.

"Alright… let's see how it breaks," I decided, and with a hand, I began to fiddle with the light. It felt… almost like a pair of headphones that were left in your pocket and became a tangled mess. Only with ten pairs of headphones tied into a Gordian knot -- you couldn't pull something without pulling nine other things, and you couldn't untangle it somewhere without tangling it further somewhere else.

Beyond that… the colors felt like a closed book, in a way. While it was easy to simply put the book on another shelf or even pinch a page to yank it out, it was different to open the book up. It was one of those fancy tomes that had a latch on them. I could look inside, but turning the pages wasn't easy.

So, I tried to yank the book open. To rip the knots free.

I watched as the kaleidoscope shattered, like someone took a brick to a glass window -- some parts shattered beyond repair while others had fatal cracks running through them. Colors began to blend together, pooling where they shouldn't. The synth on the table spasmed, the monitoring equipment telling that my clone wasn't having a great time as blood trickled out of his nose.

"So, the damage translates to severe brain hemorrhages, hm?" I observed that the synth was fading fast. I helped him cling to life while inspecting the now-open book that was his soul-slash-consciousness. It was vastly more open now.

Open enough that it reminded me of something. Or, rather, someone.

"Hmm," I hummed as I then held out a hand, gathering all the mana that was within the Room. Just as the Amp-Room allowed me to perceive that light, it tightened my ability to touch mana.

Unlike every time before, the mana in the air began to obey my commands. It gathered in the palm of my hand, swirling to a central point. This also gave me an idea of how I could refine mana crystals because, a second later, a small BB-like pill sat in my hand. It was the same ethereal blue as the stones that Jayce had shown me, only the surface was smooth.

Like a gem, instead of uncut crystal.

Pressing the mana gem into the synth's body, I watched how the ambient mana interacted with the shattered kaleidoscope. How it added its own color into the mix -- a color that I couldn't quite perceive. As if I was colorblind to it. But, while I couldn't perceive the color, I could perceive its effects. It flowed like water, settling into the cracks and missing holes. But, when the gaps proved to be too small to hold all of the mana, it began to spill over.

The synth's veins shined blue for a moment, blood coming out of his nose, ears, and eyes. His back arched for a moment before going still, his heart monitor flatlining. I looked down at him, extracting the mana stone from his corpse to find that it was a little smaller.

"Playing mad scientist is pretty fun," I decided, setting the refined mana stone to the side as I unstrapped the synth and shoved him into the recycling bay for the synth machine. I felt like I had learned a lot just now. And I had a few theories on how to move forward.

With the synth being recycled and another one being produced, I walked over to my desk and grabbed the ham radio. It was hardly the most secure method of communication, but this world hadn't discovered radio waves yet, so the only one I had to be worried about was Asami. And with my Room, I was able to mitigate that concern ever so slightly. Even still, it was best to keep the transmissions short. Just in case.

"Cinder, I could use you in my workshop," I spoke into the radio.

"I'll be right there," Cinder replied so swiftly it was as if she had been waiting for my summons. Nor did she waste any time arriving at my decoy workshop. With a quick Shambles, I brought her into the basement. And I saw why she thought she had been summoned -- wearing a short pencil skirt, a tight fitted white blouse shirt, and tall boots that ended mid thigh. She looked good and she knew it.

However, I was distracted by something else.

The aura around her. That invisible forcefield that she used to protect herself from harm. It was like the kaleidoscope. Not necessarily the same, but close enough that I could use her as a reference.

"Cinder," I greeted her as she strutted forward, a seductive smile tugging at her lips. "You look good."

"As do you," Cinder purred, pressing herself against my side. She was feeling frisky. Or she wanted something. "You also have excellent timing. I was just about to bring a status update to your attention." I cocked an eyebrow even as one of my hands ghosted along her ass and copped an appreciative feel.

"Update away," I decided, paying more attention to the aura around her. Me groping her ass was partly to distract her from my distraction. Just partly though.

Cinder was all too eager to show off a little, "An arrangement has been made to embed Annie into Mel Medarda's camp. Mel won't trust her enough to make her a secretary at first, so we'll have to induce opportunities for advancement." By that, she meant creating problems for Annie to solve to make her look good, or to make those around her look bad to remove them from play.

It'd be another long term project measuring in months at least, but that was fine. It'd pay off eventually, and even if it didn't, Annie was a feint in the first place, something to make Asami look in the wrong direction.

"Good," I decided, my hand straying further down to the hem of her skirt to pull it up with a finger, revealing she wasn't wearing panties underneath. "And have you decided where you would like to fit in yet?" I asked her, curious.

Cinder flashed me a smile, "You have Robin in the University. You have Annie in the Council. Sukuna and Yoruichi are both in the Undercity. The last major factor in the city are the Enforcers." Her hand went to my groin, stroking my length as she buttered me up for the idea. She didn't really need to.

The Enforcers were a solid pick. It'd give us the legal cudgel to use against Asami if Cinder was a high-ranking member. Something I imagined would take time, but that was fine too. We were all putting down roots, getting ready for the long game as Asami was acting shockingly frugal with whatever cards she planned to play.

That being said, I did have concerns, "What about Rumi?" I asked her, not giving anything away. Rumi was Asami's biggest ally in this game we were playing. Asami, for her part, was focusing on the company. Developing inroads with her own points of influence within the Council. Yet, Rumi had been largely… detached in the past three months. Still firmly on Asami's side of things, but I couldn't puzzle out what her plans were.

"Rumi is looking outside of the city," Cinder answered, and that was a guess that she was presenting as a fact. "Mercenary companies, foreign merchants -- I'm not entirely sure what her aim is," she admitted, "but I suspect that she's looking to develop a force outside of your influence."

Could be. It was a reasonable enough play, I could admit. I had more cards to play and I was rapidly building up a foundation in Piltover. With how my Room functioned, and Yoruichi's growing spy network, Asami would know that most of her actions on the city would be monitored. Same with Rumi. So, sending her outside of our sphere of influence to find counters to our natural advantages was a move I could see her making.

It still felt like a half answer though. But it was one that I would accept, simply because I knew I wouldn't be able to trust any answer I did receive. Even if I received the whole truth, I'd still be suspicious.

"It'd be better to have Yoruichi keep an eye on her anyway," I mused, not missing how Cinder relaxed ever so slightly. "The Enforcers are a solid pick. Plus, I think one of the Council members is sending their daughter into them. Or she wants to join. I've heard both."

"I'll make sure that I leave a strong impression on her," Cinder replied dutifully. I'm not sure if anything would come of it, but you missed every shot you didn't take. It'd be nice to bring Caitlyn Kiramman into our sphere of influence. What form that would take, I had no idea. It was just a possibility worth exploring.

"See that you do," I said, looking down at her as the synth machine beeped once more. Glancing down at her with a smile, I continued, "While I have you here… would you mind explaining how your soul is outside of your body?"

The easy confidence and almost smug pride at getting what she wanted vanished in a second, replaced with a feeling that I could only describe as 'Oh, shit.' I wanted her off kilter, and I got it. Cinder, in the end, was a liar. I liked her. I would pretend to make her my left hand, my closed fist that I used to bludgeon others into submission. Yet, never would I ever make the mistake of trusting her.

Her reaction proved that thoroughly.

Cinder reacted as if that was something she was deliberately keeping secret from me.

To her credit, she recovered as smoothly as she could have. "That is my Aura," Cinder answered with barely a hitch. "It's part of my power -- my Semblance is Scorching Caress, but Aura itself has more general applications. Such as shielding the user from harm. I never mentioned it because it never struck me as important. Nor was it, until now."

She spoke of it freely, telling me that wasn't the part that she had been trying to hide. "Your world sounds like a real interesting place, Cinder. Using your soul as a shield… ah, well, you're right -- it wasn't really important until now. I'm just running a little science experiment, and when I started fiddling with the soul… well…" I shrugged, gesturing to the recycling unit that was now in full swing.

Cinder had a fantastic poker face. Just not one good enough to hide her feelings from my Amp-Room. They were easier to read now than ever. I could feel her spike of panic, the uncertainty, and her caution. Especially with her soul out in the open like it was -- every emotion she felt was like reading a highlighted passage in a book.

"I was wondering if it was something that we could replicate. Is everyone like you in your world? Is there some kind of process involved?" I asked leading questions, and I could all but watch her plan to lie to me. It was actually pretty amusing.

"Not without cost," Cinder answered, stepping away from me and flipping her skirt down. Shame that was. "Aura has its inherent dangers, as does awakening the Aura of another. The connection of souls… if done clumsily… well, you've already seen the result. And I will confess that I've never attempted to awaken someone's Aura before." Cinder said, offering an apologetic look in my direction.

She did a solid job of mixing the truth and lies together, so I wasn't entirely sure what was true and what was false. But that didn't really matter. "Well, we have the perfect training dummies for you to practice on, if you're up for it," I said, deciding to give her an out.

"Of course," Cinder readily agreed, "I live to serve you." She added, and I swallowed a laugh at that blatant lie. She was trying to recover any lost favor she might have lost with this discovery. I wasn't too mad about it, but I was content to let her think as much. I liked Cinder, but it was almost too easy to lead her around by the nose. Then again, I guess it wasn't particularly fair -- I was playing with cheat codes enabled. I'm sure she'd be a lot more convincing if I couldn't see her lying to me.

Bringing the synth to the table, Cinder placed her hands on his chest, and I watched the process carefully. Her soul flowed into the synth, touching upon his. The process was… strange, but it was one part dredging the soul up from the depths of his body as Cinder muttered something under her breath. The other part was undoing the 'clasp' that was on the book of his soul, allowing the contents of it to spill freely.

Cinder, for her part, acted as if the process was more difficult than it was. She kept her hand on his chest for a minute longer, stalling out the process in fits and bursts that were entirely too calculated to be natural. That revealed what she lied to me about.

I didn't doubt that it was her first time activating someone's Aura, as she had called it. What she lied about was the difficulty of the act.

I didn't mind the lie either, especially when it allowed me to analyze the whole process much better. Not enough that I could easily replicate it, but I figured there'd be no more than a dozen dead synths before I figured it out. Which would make further experiments much easier. Cinder let out a small breath like she was releasing the tension before stepping back from the synth.

"It's done," she informed, letting me take a step forward. She was right -- the synth, with a feeble and fragile soul, had been awakened. The book was open, letting me touch the contents with far greater ease. Perfect for what I intended.

Wordlessly, I pressed the mana stone into the synth's body and observed the effects. The synth began to squirm in discomfort, still unconscious and unaware but sensing something was wrong. And something indeed was very wrong.

Without an already broken open soul, the mana had to interject itself into the mix. Spiderweb cracks spread across the kaleidoscope, letting mana seep into everything and drown it all out. Yet, the end result was more or less the same -- the synth dying of brain hemorrhages, even if the process took longer.

Cinder watched in silence as the synth died on the table, her gaze flickering to me to gauge my reaction. She expected anger at the failure, so I put her at ease with a smile, "Feel like you have one more in you?"

"Of course," Cinder agreed and, once more, the process repeated itself. The dead synth was recycled, another was created, and Cinder awoke his Aura. The only part that changed was that I took a syringe to the synth and began to withdraw emotions from him. One by one, bags were filled with liquids of various colors, each one an emotion and all that it held. The kaleidoscope of his soul was rendered dull and colorless.

This time, I watched as the mana flowed into the synth's body and soul. The mana filled the empty void of the drained soul, stripped of all emotion and sense of self. Unlike before, where the mana acted as air filling an already full balloon, this time the balloon didn't pop. The mana filled the soul, reaching the boundary of how much it could take… and then it began to settle. It reached an equilibrium.

And I had my answer.

Reaching out, I pulled upon the soul of the synth, the mana drawing from it in the form of a long string. The tangled mess was rendered null and void, all of it becoming one, making it easy to untangle. One by one, I pulled strings out of the soul until I had ten in total and I held them aloft.

Cinder narrowed her eyes at them, and I realized that they were visible to the naked eye.

"What… are those?" She asked, sounding vaguely disturbed by the sight.

I smiled and told the honest truth.

"I have absolutely no idea," I confessed. I had no idea what they were, or how they functioned, but I did know one thing.

With them, magic was mine for the taking.