Grimoire Ultra 5 (Patreon)

A rumbling chuckle echoed in the room as the door opened and a trail of smoke drifted on the air before materializing into a hooded and masked man in one of the chairs. There was the sound of shattering glass, and a woman with three toned hair and a parasol appeared in another. Sitting opposite the woman, was an exceedingly pale, jittery man dressed in clothes that had fallen out of style centuries before. At one end of the rectangular table, the functional head of the clandestine operation sat, a black bodysuit with a white stylized snake wrapped along its length being the only identifying mark.

“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Reyes,” the masked man sitting at the head of the table said, his voice calm and smooth. “Any developments we should be aware of?”

“I met with the representative of this ‘League of Villains’ and if he’s not someone’s puppet or tool I’ll kiss a monkey,” the hooded man said ruefully. “They might be useful distractions, but I wouldn’t count on them being anything trustworthy.”

“Unfortunate, but not unexpected,” the head of the table mused, before turning to the jittery man. “Doctor, how are the projects coming along?”

“Well, the rather… eclectic physiology of the materials I’ve been provided has proved vexing at times, but I believe that so long as the supplies continue to be provided, I will have a final product ready by the end of the week,” he answered.

“Splendid, we eagerly await your success,” he said before turning to the last of their number. “Neo, how has your scouting gone?”

Rather than answering, the sole female of the group held up a notebook, showing her and another individual. The individual had what looked like an elongated tongue and a sword in their hand, before she turned the page, showing the individual lashing out at her with his sword. Another flip of the page showed her fighting them, before a final flip showed her stabbing the back of their neck. At the same time, she reached beside her and picked up a small sack and tossed it to the doctor, who fumbled with it for a moment before setting it down in front of him and peeking inside.

“Ah, thank you, Madam,” he said while sending a smile her way.

“And how have your endeavors gone this last week?” the hooded man asked, looking pointedly at the man who sat at the table’s head.

“Establishing criminal enterprises takes time, Mr. Reyes, as you well know. However, I have already laid the groundworks for expanding our operations,” came the response. “Additionally, I have established a working relationship with an information broker who has kindly given me a list of targets that are suitable to our master’s… tastes.”

“A list I’ve already started on,” came a raspy voice from the door, making all for straighten up and turn. The woman who entered was far from what one would call a beauty, her mud colored hair hung from her head in greasy strands, her limbs emaciated to the point they looked skeletal, her stomach bloated in a manner normally seen on those that had not eaten for weeks.

Yet despite her apparent frailty, she moved with a predatory, hungry grace. Stalking up to the table, she pushed the man in black and white aside before taking the seat, kicking her feet up on the table. The one she displaced moved calmly to another seat, sitting in it and lacing his fingers together.

“Victor, I placed what I didn’t eat in your lab. I made sure to leave some choice cuts for you,” she said while reaching up and picking at her teeth with nails that had grown to the point they resembled claws.

“Th-thank you, Ma’am,” Doctor Victor Frankenstein stammered nervously.

“No need to thank me,” she rasped with a chuckle. “It is amazing what people throw away, and after all, sharing is caRing.”

Her face elongated as she said the last word, stretching and warping both her features and her voice, before snapping back as it was before. The four at the table, despite their loyalty, all shuddered at the brief exposure to the monster hidden under human skin. She simply grinned, drawing amusement at their discomfort.

“Now then, anything else new to report or discuss?” she asked.

“Anything new on The Bureau agent?” Reyes asked, turning more towards the man now sitting across from him.

“UA has moved to an optional dormitory system and he accepted. It will prove difficult to move to eliminate him so long as he is staying there. For the time being, we would be better suited focusing on The Company’s missions, as the more traditional means of securing Company Credits are unavailable to us,” was his answer, prompting a scoff from the emaciated woman they served.

“Stamps and bindings are the tools of the weak and lazy. What is the point in a hunt if you are going to press a piece of wood to them for three seconds then leave? A hunt should have a thrill, it should leave your heart racing with anticipation and adrenaline, so few of my fellows understand,” she snarled, a twisted, ugly sneer on her face.

“Indeed,” Reyes said, only partially in agreement. “If that is all, I will proceed with my current assignment.”

There were no disagreements, so he stood, turned into smoke, and drifted out of the room. The other three also stood, only for rasped orders to make them pause, “Coil, you stay put, Neo, Victor, you can go.”

Neopolitan smiled, opening up her parasol and resting it against her shoulder. Victor picked up the bag she’d tossed him earlier, the bottom beginning to leak red blood, and walked around the table, holding out his elbow for her to take. She did so, the typically nervous man positively towering over her.

As the door closed, Thomas Calvert began to sweat under his bodysuit, splitting timelines as the Contractor who owned him turned her gaze to him.

“Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,” she drawled with a number of tsk’ing sounds. “What am I going to do with you?”

{Timeline A}

“Have I done something to displease you?” he asked, feigning ignorance. It had hardly been his fault that the Japanese had taken such offense after all.

“Don’t play Coy WITh Me,” she began, standing from her seat as her body elongated, her skull pushing out and causing the skin of her face to split and tear. He dropped the timeline as quickly as he was able.

{Timeline B}

“I realize that I made a mistake,” he said, much as saying so made his pride burn. “I failed to take into account the cultural differences between Twenty First Century America and Twenty Third Century Japan.”

“Is that so?” she drawled, resting her face on her hand.

He sighed and nodded. Ice ran down his spine as she gave a quiet snort, “Yes and no. Yes you made a mistake, but I very much doubt you learned from it. How many times have you split time for this conversation? Once? Twice? More? I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’ll let it slide this time, but if you screw up on this scale again…”

It happened faster than Thomas could perceive: one moment she was sitting in her chair on the opposite side of the room, then in the span of a blink she was in her wendigo form, spider-like fingers wrapped around his neck as she lifted him into the air. A long, wet, and slimy tongue stretched out of her fanged mouth, trailing from his collarbone, under the seam between his bodysuit and his mask, and up along his jaw and face. Maintaining his composure was an exercise in futility, though he did his best anyways.

The tongue pulled back, sliding into the skull that was her head, glowing eyes peering down at him, “NExt tIME, I’ll PICk an aRM foR DinnER.”

“Un…” he managed to wheeze out. “Under… stood…”

He fell, the grip stronger than steel released, as he sucked in air to refill his lungs. The Contractor turned to her desk, the piece of furniture on the far end of the room nearly forgotten, picked up a small silver box and placed it on top. She took out a key and unlocked the top, pushing it open to reveal a number of cigars, each of which had a single gold leaf affixed to the tip. She selected one, then sat herself down in her chair, leaning forward to light up.

Thomas laid there, panting, until he was sure she wasn’t going to attack him again. Then he got up, walking over to stand in front of her desk, and asked, “May I be dismissed, Master?”

She took in a deep breath of the nicotine rich smoke, before sending a ring into his face. An inhuman smirk stretched across her face as she waved him off with her free hand.

[hr][/hr]

I looked over the faces of the other heroes in training sitting around the table, expressions of focus, determination, and nerves plain to see as they stared at the papers in front of them. The last four hours had all come to this moment, and none of them wanted to be the one who screwed up. Kiri had a notepad next to him, writing down numbers and crunching the math. Izumi was flipping through the books, looking for a single key scrap of information. Toga was double checking her own sheet, making sure that she wasn’t forgetting anything. Momo, the gift from god that she was, was the only one of the four sitting calmly, a bright, happy smile on her face.

Kiri finally spoke up after a few minutes of relative silence. “Mido, I might need you to double check my math, but assuming I got it right, I think we’ll be able to take the necromancer out in the first round. We’ve got a surprise round, so Toga-san and I rush in, I hit him with a Smite while she Rages. Yaoyorozu-san, you use Turn Undead to keep his minions off us while Mirdoriya-san delivers a slew of Sneak Attacks.”

The smile on my face was as big as I could make it, watching my four classmates plan, plot, and come up with creative solutions to the problems I’d put in front of them. Much as I freely admit that this was a nerd game, it was still good practice at thinking outside the box and approaching problems creatively. I may have also designed the scenario around a necromancer performing a ritual curse that would go off if they didn’t move fast enough. Hey, if it worked for All Might’s Battle Trials, it was good enough for a tabletop game.

“Alright,” Momo said, pulling me back to the here and now. “We are all in agreement?”

“Yup,” Kiri said with a shark toothed grin, turning to face me. “I use my maul to smash open the door and charge the necromancer.”

I double checked my notes at a glance and said, “Alright, roll a Reflex save.”

His face sank as he picked up one of the twenty sided dice I’d loaned him for the session, “Crap, okay, I have a bonus of three, I roll this and… that’s a twenty, so twenty three?”

“That’s a natural twenty, so a critical success,” I answered with a grin. “Torbek manages to just barely duck out of the way of a shot of sticky silk sent his way by a massive spider perched on the wall above the ritual circle. You see a glimmer of malevolent, cunning intelligence gleaming within its eight, crimson eyes, and a rhythmic hiss of air seems to come from its body, as if it’s laughing at you.”

“Why did it have to be a spider,” Momo muttered as I placed a giant spider mini on the battlemap. It wasn’t technically a proper mini, it was a cheapo toy spider I’d gotten from a dollar store, but it worked just as well.

“Does the spider do anything else?” Kiri asked, leaning intently over the roughly drawn map on the floor between us.

In the end, they managed to beat the necromancer and the surprise spider, finding a note in the necromancer’s robes. Was it a hook to get the four of them invested in continuing to play each week? Absolutely. Did it work? Most definitely. Momo and Kiri especially were far more into it than I’d been anticipating.