A Grim Bond 13 (Patreon)

A Grim Bond 13 - or ‘The Grim Adventures turns into Broken Tales’ (Grim Tales from Below, OC!Brother to Mandy)

The castle was awfully quiet.

Mandy would have previously loved the silence, but now she felt upsetted by it. Her children had been taken from her and she knew, mostly through the sheer might exerted by her brother and the lack of fear in facing her, Grim and Nergal Jr. all at once that he could deal with them as easily as he promised them.

It was irritating, it was horrible and it was… depressing.

Normally, Mandy would have had a lover to tend to her needs in a moment of stress such as this one, but the bed was empty and she was wearing her old sleepwear from before she adopted skimpier outfits.

She just felt her whole body aching as she stared listlessly at the ceiling of the bedroom. She wasn’t alone this time around, with Grim standing by the door, vigilant and yet curious.

Had it been the old times, the bunch of bones would have ridiculed her own weakness. Not as a way to call her truly weak, but to deny the many times she called herself strong- the many times that, through pain and hardship, she became the toughest entity in the underworld.

Mandy was, however, not an idiot. She knew that she had been a mortal child once. She could also remember most of the interactions that had given her some ‘unusual delight’ back when she was but a young student at Megaville Elementary School.

She remembered Bubbles in particular. That stupid idiot was actually a pleasant upgrade from Billy- but within her innocence was a sense of strength that was beyond human. And it made Mandy somewhat jealous of the fellow blonde.

Not to the point of plotting the stealing of her powers, no, but enough to cut any contact with the girl once she became mayor. Shit had been going bad for Megaville for a while, and HIM had actually dared to establish an alliance with her. Poor bastard got a holy hand-grenade down his throat for even trying to bed her.

That’s when Megaville experienced some peace and… then she left due to the marriage proposal from Grim. At that point, HIM knew the city was free game and decimated it. A shame, really, but Mandy didn’t care.

Perhaps she should have cared. If she did, she would have learned of something that further slammed her on the ground. When Arthur told her that Mimi was his daughter… he didn’t know how true that statement was.

Blossom hadn’t started to be a scientist for fanservice. The girl had actually studied under her father’s guidance, gaining incredible wisdom in technological advances to put her on par with Dexter. And Mimi was… her ‘greatest opportunity’.

While it’s true that Mimi was born from the union of Blossom and HIM, her DNA was different. For a time this file was kept within the safety of the US’ Department of Occult and Paranormal Affairs, but her goons had found it and brought it to her attention right after that park fiasco.

Blossom had… a sample of Arthur’s DNA. From what her notes dictated, the woman had realized that there was something inherently ‘anti-HIM’ within Arthur’s blood. The ‘Hamon’ that her brother had mentioned a while ago came to mind as Blossom realized it was the key to save his daughter from the worst case possible.

The experiment was similar to how her and her sisters were born, but rather than being an absolute mimicry, it was the use of Chemical X in a way that perfectly blended Arthur’s DNA within Mimi’s young body as a baby.

The process was successful and Mimi showed traits within her blood that established one thing: Arthur was also her father by a biological standpoint.

And it meant that his claim of being her father was… true.

Mandy hated this. She hated being crossed like this, knowing that Blossom had done this without her brother’s consent and, even if she tried to make a point on this with him, it would only put her in a worse spot than the one she was currently dealing with.

In fact, Arthur would love to hear this to further consolidate the belief he was the little brat’s father.

…

Mandy was not sure what to do with this. The information was telling to her, but worthless beyond being informational. It didn’t add more to her points, it didn’t give her a reason to come crashing to claim her children back.

Balance in the Underworld was delicate, and a large mobilization to just attack a single individual, one that seems to have established a good connection with a fellow Overlord was… jarring.

And then there was the emotional restraint.

Mandy had hours and hours to see old footage from memories stored by Grim over her past. She had demanded for him to prove her brother wrong, but Grim had done the opposite by showing her the truth.

It wasn’t always, it wasn’t too frequently, but Mandy realized that she came close to getting seriously hurt as a child. While dying wasn’t an option, getting mauled and severely injured were.

And Arthur had carried her stupid ass through those moments into a safer situation.

She took those as granted. As those were just unquestionable details that didn’t make her brother any more important than any other individual in her life. But only now, as she saw the shivering little Arthur as he recoiled from traumatic experiences she had shrugged off with ease, Mandy… felt actually bad.

Not for the pain, not for the ignorance but for the fact she expected her brother to just care again after the lack of gratefulness she owed him. The fact she never thanked him for those moments but did so for the mere food he would pass her was…

Frustrating.

But as Mandy continued to procrastinate and concede to a genuine lack of opportunities to fix these many mistakes, something changed. It was a guard that came knocking. Grim vanished under the door to deal with this as her current condition which saw her eyes refusing to stop the tears from rolling and rolling down her cheeks after endless years of a lack of crying made her ‘impossible to approach right now’.

She was so weak…

And the upset look on Grim’s face further confirmed a somber circumstance as he returned inside the room with a letter.

“HIM has called for a session of the Eternal Council.”

“...We are not going.”

“It’s about an attack on ‘a couple Hell's royal children’. He wants to ‘fix what mistake you made’.”

Mandy jumped off the bed. “Rebuke him, I will not accept-”

“He has gained confirmation that the Archangels have accepted his invitations.”

…

“What?” Why would Heaven be involved with this?!

“HIM said something about… Arthur had a blessing to be protected by Heaven after he first crossed HIM. It seems that God had given Arthur a blessing of protection- he wants that lifted.”

“Can he remove it?”

“Debatable, but I doubt he is just planning to go for a diplomatic endeavor. I believe we need to be there.”

At this point, it was needed. All tears vanished at the thought of HIM abusing her current plight to HIS advantages. No, Mandy was not going to let that happen.

“If HIM wants to dance, we will not dance,” Mandy hummed, standing up from bed, her bloody red eyes and vicious scowl telling Grim that the Bitch Queen was back for the ultimate hail mary for this slight.

“We will break his legs.”

—------d-d-d-d—-----------

AN

Soon, some truths will come up through Heaven’s own recollection for reasons tied to the ‘Eternal Council’. Despite its name, the Council is actually a rare occurrence where all Ovelords of Hell meet to discuss affairs that matter to the entirety of the Underworld.

And HIM’s ploy is a bit more complicated than just ‘asking for permission’- rather, he wants to find out something he may not… find as it no longer exists.