Amber POV

My gut-feeling was right after all. He survived. Or well, his body seemed mostly intact. He was glowing white-hot, so anything else was pretty hard to determine.

After my magic had cooled him down, Blue and I brought him into the ship for a closer examination.

“What’s he made of?!”

I was just as surprised as Blue, but for a different reason. Peacekeeper was… He was changed since he took off from the planet half an hour ago.

He had been touched by Fate. Like Blue. Like HIM. It was then when I realized that Fate had done this to give me a second chance.

As good of a student as Blue was, there was just no way he could ever stop Deus before it was too late. Peacekeeper on the other hand…

He was strong. He could throw hands with me as is. With a bit of encouragement I was pretty sure he could get strong enough before Deus would attempt his ascension.

“That hardly matters. Just heal him for now. I’m interested to see how far he’ll go.”

Blue sighed. “Sure. But I got a bad feeling about this.”

I just hope this wasn’t going to blow up in my face like last time. Maybe I should take Times advice: let go of my mortal shell, and stop interacting directly with people.

No. I couldn’t do that. I am powerful enough to invoke a change for the better. It’s my duty to do that. Building a utopia is delusional, yes, but I can at least try to get as close to one as possible.

“This is weird. There’s no burn-related injuries. Everything is either crushed or damaged by sheer brute force. I mean, okay, supernovae probably do that, I guess, but they’re also supposed to be super hot. I don’t know how, but I’m certain our patient is 100% fireproof.”

Interesting. Maybe it was something to do with his origin? It would be a very weird coincidence, but it should be possible for a fire-attuned one to negate most if not all the harmful effects of heat.

In theory at least. Hell, even I wouldn’t want to test my chances with something as hot as a supernova, if I was able to truly die, and I was basically a living flame.

“Okay, he’s stabilized. It’ll probably take him a while to wake up, but he’s going to live. Probably. Gods know, it wasn’t easy…”

 

Draco POV

Sounds of me punching the sand-bag that someone had installed in my apartment could be heard throughout the entire space that had been given to me. Probably well past that too.

Unfortunately, I knew that if I were to really try, I’d instantly rip apart the bag and probably fuse some of the sand inside into glass. Maybe I should invest in a neutronium-lined punching bag. 

I figured not even my wrath could punch through that. Well, with a single punch, anyways. As is, this carbonium-fiber bag just simply was too fragile to really let me really power myself out, which was the whole reason for this exercise.

Find something durable enough to take my punches and punch it until I didn’t feel like shit anymore. Not the best of approaches, I had to admit, but, hey, were YOU going to approach a pissed off Dragonkin who just lost everyone he’d ever cared about and tell him he needed to stop? Thought so.

It was a really nice distraction and a good training when it came to pulling my punches, though. Not breaking the bags the instant my fist made contact with it, I meant.

Took a lot of focus. And as long as I focused on not breaking this bag, I couldn’t think about Leo, Fox, Crimson and even Bob being gone. Forever. Because I was a selfish idiot.

And because I was supposed to be dead and didn’t want to lose my one strategic advantage, I couldn’t even go apologize to their families.

Well, to be fair, Leo didn’t really have a lot of family. In a sense, we were his family. Bob… Honestly, he never really talked much about his personal life at work. He never talked a lot in general. I hope he didn’t think I resented him because I was forced to take him as part of my squad.

I wasn’t a fan of how he joined us, but I did appreciate the value he added to fights. Well in theory at least. He also started teaching Fox how to be a sniper. The punching-bag was long gone at this point.

Crimson. I was going to miss her a lot. The Foxkin was much more than just my second in command. I know I seemed annoyed at her a lot, but I did enjoy our banter. Plus she had a point more often than not.

And of course, Fox was going to be the hardest one for me to lose. He was like a little brother to me. This was his first field mission. I told- no, I promised his parents that I’d keep him safe. And what did I do?

I dragged him to the front lines and went off to fight someone way more powerful than I by myself, leaving him in harm's way with no chance I could intervene should something happen.

“I’m such a fucking idiot…”

I tossed the broken bag onto the pile with the others and sat down at the table in the kitchen, whilst pouring myself a glass of what was essentially pure alcohol.

“That’s debatable.” I hadn’t noticed Amber until just now. “Sorry again about your crew. How are you coping?”

“More or less…” I gestured at the rather large pile of broken punching-bags.

“More more, or…?”

“More less, less more.” I took a big mouthful of the stuff in my glass and grimaced a bit as it burned while going down.

“I’m pretty much just working out excessively to keep my mind off of them. Dumb I know but… I’m not strong enough to tackle it head on”

Amber let out a small laugh at that.

“It makes sense, but at the same time it’s so funny that the person who took on a star and won - for a while - is scared of facing demons that aren’t even real.”

“I know. And I know I have to get to terms with it eventually. But, for now, all I can do is focus all of this into anger and determination. I am going to kill Omega, prophecy or not!”

“Prophecy?”

“Ahh, basically... the bastard can’t die while in combat with a man.”

“Is that so? Well, I don’t think YOU need to worry about that.”

I had no idea what they meant with that. And why emphasize the you? It doesn’t make sense. Of course I’d have to worry about the prophecy. I am - unfortunately - a man.

I mean, I KNOW trans people exist, yes, but I’m not one of them. I’d love to be one so I could get to be a woman, but I’m just me. Yay.

And even if, knowing this literally royal asshole, he absolutely did not make that prophecy trans inclusive.

Actually, could you do that? Declare who is and isn’t included within a certain group in a prophecy?

“Before you do that though, I have a request.”

My train of thought was interrupted by Amber, who had made themselves comfortable opposite of me.

“Sure, what is it?”

“Blue is...” They paused for a second. “I’ve tried to teach him magic, but I feel like I’ve hit a wall. And no matter what I do, I can’t seem to get through to him. Could you train him?”

“I mean, I can try. I need some more stuff to keep myself occupied anyways.”

“The punching-bags aren’t good enough for you?”

I wordlessly stared at the pile of broken ones that piled up until the ceiling for a while, before saying: “That’s just today, you know…”

“Oh my~ It seems we might run out of punching bags soon…”

I sighed. “Anything specifically you want me to teach him?”

“Why wasting mana and not having perfect control over your magic is terrible.”

Hmmm… 

How would I teach that to someone?

I HAVE seen him do some mock-battles with others when I “vented” my frustrations at the gym. Maybe he’d be interested in sparring with me.

That could work. All I’d have to do is get him to be frustrated with how he couldn’t win. Then he’d probably resort to using magic.

If he really was as terrible at using magic as Amber made him out to be, I’d then scold him for it and then he’d probably be begging me to teach him how to actually use it.

“I think that’s doable, yes.”

 

Blue POV

One more round. I was going to land a hit on him this time. While I still couldn’t form an opinion on whether or not I hated him, I had to respect Peacekeeper - he still hadn’t blessed us with knowledge of his actual name - for being a fair sport. He said he would not engage and only counter, and that’s what he did. Which made it all the more humiliating.

The game we played was simple: we’d both try and land a clean hit and whoever did it first won the round. Peacekeeper had won the previous fifty rounds and he wasn’t showing any signs of exhaustion. I, on the other hand, had to stop to catch my breath between rounds. It was good that Peacekeeper didn’t initiate, because that way I could recover for as long as I needed between rounds.

However, even then, he would never let down his guard, which led to me scrapping the surprise attack plan after it failed five times. Ever since then I had been trying out different things - different angles, feints, being purposely reckless - but everything failed.

Everything resulted in me being hit. And if Peacekeeper pulled his punches like he said he was doing, I did not want to know how much they would hurt when he was serious.

I considered my options. I hadn’t tried using magic yet. I figured it would be against the rules. Then again, it wasn’t like anyone had said magic wasn’t allowed, even though Peacekeeper had refrained from using his, something I was thankful for.

The dude stopped a supernova. Even if only for a few minutes. I wasn’t really prepared to throw hands with that kind of power. 

Deciding to pry open Pandoras Box anyways, I started channeling mana through my origin. Just some basic reinforcement. Nothing more.

It didn’t take a lot of mana and was very basic and limited in application, but it was essential. It boosted speed, power and endurance by a great amount. It’s pretty hard to shoot someone who is at your throat by the time you can pull the trigger.

In fact I was pretty sure the prevalence of artificial origins was solely due to soldiers being literally useless if they couldn’t use reinforcement magic. Not that I had needed such a thing, born with a decently strong origin.

After taking some time to focus my mana, I sprung into action. Magic boosted my agility as I closed the gap between myself and Peacekeeper. My hands glowed brightly as I lunged at him, a dead giveaway that I was using magic. 

Probably way more than necessary, but since I only needed to land one punch, I didn't really care about that. One punch that looked like it would connect.

Until it didn’t. Peacekeeper had twisted out of the way at the very last second, and used the momentum from the twirl to ram an elbow into my side. Probably having ended up in a position to dodge, counter or block any incoming attack.

Not that I could see that. I was too busy being slammed into a wall. Let me tell you, crashing through a brick wall is not a fun experience .But I’m not going to stop here! Might as well keep going. 

I stood up and - body still reinforced by magic - dashed back towards my adversary. I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing too much anymore, just deciding to throw a flurry of blows at Peacekeeper, all of which were easily dodged or blocked.

Maybe Peacekeeper had been using reinforcement magic all this time. He seemed to have no issues keeping up with my enhanced speed and he blocked and redirected the reinforced punches like they were nothing. 

“Okay, stop! You’re not even trying anymore, you’re just blindly throwing your fists, hoping to hit something.”

He wasn’t wrong. I just didn’t want to admit it. I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew I was wasting mana. I knew all of those things, but I wanted to try it anyway on the off chance it worked.

“How do I hit you then?”, I asked, defeated.

“You keep doing what you’ve been doing before: Try out new tactics, shift your approach, change and adapt plans, all that. Hell, if I wasn’t, like, a million times faster than you, you probably would have hit me already.

Actually… I think your best bet is to work on your combat-speed, if your goal is to hit me.

If your goal is to get better at fighting, you need to learn how to not waste mana and work on your stamina. In actual combat I could have defeated you without ever touching you, just because you keep wasting energy.”

What did he mean by that? I understood the issue of wasting mana, I was leaking a lot of excess mana when reinforcing myself, but energy? How was I wasting energy?

“You move way too much. Think back to how I’ve been fighting. I always used the minimum amount of movement required to dodge or block. And more often than not, I would use some of the momentum I had built up while dodging to counterattack.”

He must have seen the confused look on my face.

“Oh and for fucks sake, start thinking about your next moves before they happen!” He slowly shook his head.

“I think we should call it here for today. Let’s both take a shower and continue tomorrow…”

With that, Peacekeeper walked off towards his room. I still didn’t fully understand why Amber let him stay, but I knew better than to question their judgment.

Not really having a reason to stay at the gym with my training partner/instructor being gone, I reluctantly went to my room to take a shower. I hated showers… I couldn’t wear my binder in them, and, all in all, it just served as a reminder of what I was. I knew it wasn’t wrong to be like I was, but that didn’t make it feel any less wrong.

After undressing, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror whilst passing by. After cringing internally, I quickly used magic to render the mirror inert. I had no idea why I hadn’t just removed it by now.

I made it a point to turn up the water as hot as I could bear and just stand under the shower. I didn’t have to stay there for as long as I did, but standing under the shower was nice. It felt warm and comforting. And, most importantly, it almost made me forget about my chest. 

I needed to go ahead and get a better grip on my magic, so I could finally do it. Getting rid of all the things my body and the empire forced on me. Removing those lumps. And hopefully, being finally able to get the right hormones flowing through my bloodstream…

 

Draco POV

After getting out of the shower and drying myself off somewhat, I pulled my shaving knife out of my storage dimension and got to work. My beard was starting to show again, and I didn’t like the look of it. Well, to be fair, I didn’t really like the look of my face without a beard either, but at least without one, the stubble wasn’t irritating when I looked down. Plus, I liked the thrill of being one misstep away from bleeding out.

Not that I would actually cut myself with it. I could probably shave myself with a broadsword given how much time I spent mastering all manners of melee weaponry, most of which had at least one sharp edge.

Then again did swordsmanship translate over to shaving? While I was pondering the question, I finished shaving off the tiny hairs that had broken through my skin.

Normally I would just burn them off with fire-magic, but I felt like shaving today, so that’s what I did.

Putting the knife back into the storage dimension after thoroughly washing and drying it, I took a step back and looked at myself in the mirror.

I don’t know why, but whenever I came across a mirror, I would look at myself. I always hated what I saw. Yet I kept looking. Staring.

Sighing, I turned away from the mirror, grabbing a change of clothes, before throwing them onto myself. As always, I had hated what I saw. 

I scratched my head trying to figure out why I had always hated how I looked. If it was just some guy, I would agree he was hot in a heartbeat. But it wasn’t just some guy. It was me.

Me and my workout routine. Me and my steel-hard sixpack. Me and my razor-sharp jawline. Me and my buff triceps.

This was going nowhere. With a waving motion, I turned off the lights in my room as I made my way to my bed,trying to ignore everything that felt wrong until I finally fell asleep. 

Sleep was nice. Especially dreams. I often had trouble remembering mine, but I always remembered being happy in my dreams. A feat that awake me had yet to replicate.

That being said, lately I kept having the same dream over and over again. Ever since fighting the star.

It would start out with me being cold. Very cold. I didn’t know I was capable of feeling cold, but at least in dreams, I was.

And then after a while of freezing, I would look up to a window and find someone staring back at me. I couldn’t describe them if my life depended on it, but I did know that it was a beautiful woman. How I knew that? I didn’t know. Dreams - and remembering their contents - were weird. 

As I drifted off to sleep, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see that dream again or a different one. Maybe one of the ones where I was a woman. I always liked those…