The Good Life: King of Beasts (ch. 116) (Patreon)

I’d found some unexpected treats in my old world -- Sage, Cipher, and the complete series of Final Fantasy up to FF15, since I figured the other Final Fantasy worlds were in the cluster that surrounded FF7. Other media was grabbed as well just in case, though a lot of the digital stuff had been wiped by the EMPs from the nukes. The last goodie on the list of goodies was Jenova claiming the ‘Sea of Souls’ from the world, ensuring that Homelander’s soul was preserved.

However, while I did have one final plan for my old world, I instead focused on the preparations for when we were back in Medieval London, and a big part of those future preparations involved the Supes that we brought through the portal. 

Most of them were familiar to me. Homelander had sent out a rallying cry for all Supes, and most had joined him. Then most of them had flipped like a bunch of traitors and ended up slaughtered by him before our final battle. But not all had answered the call. Some went into hiding as soon as I had sent out that mass text urging the so-called heroes to indulge in their darkest and most twisted desires. Those few had managed to survive and only started poking their heads out once the bombs dropped. 

They were B and C-listers. Two speedsters, one of them a former member of the Seven named Marathon who was washed out but still fast. Then there were, as Cipher put it, a bunch of dead ends. One guy had a pocket dimension inside of his asshole, which was at least an interesting power, but one loser could turn his toes into fingers, which was… not. 

The old man puppeting a young man's body had been practically in tears of joy to learn that I could harvest the Compound V from their systems like I had Yamato. And he had been amazed to learn that I could deliberately bind Compound V to a person's DNA with my Rooms. 

Over the past few days since I returned home, I had been harvesting the dead ends of V and applying it to potential more useful prospects. Starting with Aztec warriors that had sworn themselves to Nora’s service for being the woman of ‘The Destroyer of Worlds’. I’d discovered that Vought had also been in the process of developing ‘Temp-V’, which granted temporary super powers, but they hadn't ironed out the kink of it turning the brain into Swiss cheese by the third dose by the time the bombs fell. It would certainly be useful once that research was complete, but more relevant was the fact that Vought had developed a means to give a grown adult Compound V without their DNA folding like a house of cards. 

I used that research as a guide line when applying the V to someone's DNA. And I quickly found that applying Compound V was vastly more difficult than ripping it out of a person. All the while, Cipher had been eager to elaborate on the whole process. 

“The power that a subject develops depends on the genetic markers that Compound V targets. Markers for superspeed, strength, the ability to fly, or to control minds -- however, in the average person, they will have markers for several potential super powers in them. And it is not uncommon for these markers to experience a degree of contamination during inoculation, but never enough to exhibit signs of these powers.” 

He had chatted my ear off as we had shared a lab, him working on his own task while I painstakingly applied Compound V to individual strands of DNA inside of an Amp-Room. The Aztec warrior was conscious, a bit in his mouth as he grabbed hold of grips on the table -- that hadn't been my idea, but theirs. It was a whole proving ritual thing that they had made up to prove themselves worthy of the power that they were receiving. 

“Meanwhile, the potency of the superpowers is determined by the amount of Compound V attached to these markers. They act as magnets, essentially, drawing other molecules of Compound V towards the markers. The more that bonds with that genetic marker, the stronger the power. The more evenly spread, the greater the control.” 

Which made the warriors that I was creating special cases. Most Supes had the bargain bin version of Compound V. It still gave them powers, but it wasn't the good stuff that stopped aging, massively increased durability, and so on. The result was a gamble -- a person was just as likely to end up with half decent speedster powers as they were hands for feet. Cipher had ranted about that at length. 

But more importantly, with my Amp-Room, there was no luck of the draw in terms of what powers that were received or their quality. 

Cipher showed me the markers that increased physical endurance, durability, metabolism, reaction speed, strength, speed, the ability to fly, and so on. And I applied deliberate amounts of Compound V to those markers in uniform doses -- enough speed to run a hundred and fifty miles an hour, enough strength to lift twenty-five tons, enough durability that getting shot by a tank would barely bruise. The ability to fly if the genetic marker was there, the ability to teleport if it wasn't. The power to regenerate, while not to Kimiko's level, would keep them in the fight longer even if they did take damage. 

“There was a plan,” Cipher had continued. “Successive generations would make certain traits more prolific. Supes with powers would, over generations, produce children more receptive to Compound V until we would hit a natural saturation point. I might have taken a century or two, but natural born Supes would become possible without deliberate implementation like with Project Odessa. The plan was half-assed.” 

I was working out the kinks on the Aztec warriors -- the World Eaters, as they had taken to calling themselves. Even with healing magic, I had lost about a dozen during the initial phase. DNA was pretty fragile, after all. And while I did, Cipher absorbed all of the information that he could about the new versions of Compound V. He had nothing but praise for them, and he was very excited to meet Singed and Curie. A meeting that I was looking forward to watching unfold, mostly because I thought Cipher's reaction to Singed's name was going to be really funny. 

“Supes were meant to become gods,” Cipher had continued. “Turning them into celebrities was a natural starting point. Fame, influence, money -- all things that will signal high-value mates to breed with. Promising children would be trained and administered Compound V, which was meant to be steadily improved. ‘Temp-V’ is sacrilege to that goal. Homelander encouraged mediocrity with his frail ego. The result was a world that you set on fire -- weak, easily manipulated Supes puppeted by a corporation that only cared about it's stock price.” 

Cipher wasn't all talk. Way back in the 1930s he had been working on Compound V, the strain that created Soldierboy and then Homelander, when there was a lab accident that set the whole place on fire. He took the serum to survive, but he was badly burned all over his body. His power then had been weak and, worse, he had barely been able to think straight because of the constant agony he experienced. It took him a decade to communicate with his powers for the first time, and another to take control of a feeble minded patient at the hospital he was dumped at to get out. 

He had done what he pushed others to do. He pushed his powers to their natural extremes, just as I did. And, like Taylor, it wasn't until he was able to get his hands on otherworldly technology that he found new limits to push. 

So much of Cipher's power was spent dominating the puppet that he used as a public face. When he was able to create a synth to puppet? One that was effectively brain dead? All that focus was freed up. When he started taking Mentats to enhance his already powerful brain? The results spoke for themselves. 

The lab had been filled with a dozen Ciphers, all controlled by the real one, and it massively sped up his research. A project that was expected to take months was completed in days, proving his words as the master of Compound V. I could only imagine how strong he would become once I got him a new body or he healed his current useless one -- I refrained from offering a Personality Surgery for the moment. Just so he would keep his motivation. 

We completed our projects at roughly the same time. Two hundred and fifty World Eaters were created for Nora as I perfected the bonding process for her and little Alexander. 

…

“Shame that the Buckingham Palace wasn't built for another two hundred years,” I remarked, walking through the halls of the current royal palace. Wasn't bad by all means, but Taylor's castle in Nuka-World felt more in line with what I expected of a royal palace. The servants bowed their heads with barely concealed terror -- both natives and refugees from my world alike. 

They knew that Nora and her people were powerful. They also understood that I was on a completely different level. 

Walking down the halls, I caught a glimpse of medieval London, already seeing the changes I made starting to take root. Taylor and Nora weren't the only ones to understand the wealth of opportunity before them. Robert House, confirmed as a Lord Mayor of New Vegas under Taylor's domain, was quick to sell his services to Nora to help her world begin to rapidly industrialize. Meanwhile, the Legion's ways were being formalized and integrated across the American Wasteland while Taylor looked to swiftly expand across the Americas. 

Manufactories and assembly lines were being produced, centers of industry were being erected overnight as Nora began her preparation for her continued conquest of Europe. 

I hummed a tune as I flicked a hand and a set of double doors opened, revealing a parlor that my girls were in, all of them in various states of seriousness. 

Taylor and Nora were going over plans with Sage, their recent peership not undoing years of goodwill and cooperation. Jinx was draped over a couch across from Yoruichi, who had her head in Tifa's lap while Jessie fed her grapes. Robin, meanwhile, sat near the window with baby Alexander in her lap, and she seemed unsurprised with my arrival. Was she ‘keeping an eye out’, or was her Haki training paying off? Hopefully the latter. 

“I come bearing power-ups for one and all,” I announced, seeing an immediate flash of hunger in Nora's eyes. A hunger that I couldn't blame her for. 

In the end, Nora and Alexander were regular people. A bit stronger, maybe, but ultimately still just people. Vulnerable. It was only with a decade of reflection that I realized how compromising of a position I had left them in -- moving on to the next shiny toy, leaving them completely reliant on my reputation as a god. 

“You have it, then?” She asked sharply, her planning session with Taylor half forgotten. 

In response, I Shambled a IV bag filled with Compound V -- the good stuff that Cipher had designed around my power delivering it directly to their DNA. The man did excellent work. What I hadn't expected was for Nora to cross the room in three quick steps and kiss me hard. It was a kiss filled with need as much as it was relief. 

Nora had defrosted to me a bit, but the original circumstances of our relationship had stopped her from ever really warming up to me. Which was fair. I didn't mind, either. But it seems that I’d found a chink in her armor, because Nora was kissing me like she loved me. 

The peanut gallery ooh'd and awe'd,  prompting Nora to break the kiss with her face a touch flushed. She bit her bottom lip, her gaze flickering down to mine before she spoke, “Thank you.” 

It was earnest gratitude, but I waved it off, “I take care of my favorites,” I admitted without a hint of shame. “Now, are you ready?” 

“Here?” She asked, and there was a flash of arousal that ran from her womb right to her brain. I almost laughed before holding up the Compound V, and I didn't miss the echo of disappointment that things wouldn't devolve into an orgy again. 

Not yet, at least. 

“Take a seat,” I instructed and she nodded. The others sat up, as interested in the process as they were to see the result. Nora sat in a chair with her back to me, revealing a hint of the tattoo on her shoulder that dipped towards her breasts and back. I took in a deep breath, creating an Amp-Room, and then, “Injection.” 

Nora's DNA was interesting. Her time in the Wasteland had exposed her to radiation, but whereas everyone else's DNA suffered damage, hers had produced mutations that were exclusively beneficial. She didn’t become a ghoul. She didn’t become disfigured. She could still die of radiation, certainly, but the damage it was meant to cause only enhanced her. 

And that adaptability was what I targeted with the Compound V. 

She got all the base upgrades -- faster, stronger, more durable, immortality, flight, etc, but her true power was rooted in her adaptability to exposure. 

Nora gasped as she felt the change take hold all at once, and instead of the flash of agony that came from such rapid metamorphosis, I changed it to pleasure. A ragged moan ripped from her throat as the wooden chair was reduced to splinters in her hands, while her thighs shattered the legs as she came harshly. “O-ohh f-fuck, Law!” She gasped, grabbing onto my wrist tight enough that a normal man's bone would shatter. Her hips bucked in place as her chest heaved. 

I caught her before she could collapse, chuckling all the while, and with a quick Shamble, she was experiencing the quivering orgasm on a lounging couch. “Whose next?” 

Unsurprisingly, most of the hands in the room were raised. 

Taylor was next, and her power was something of a challenge to work with, as the source of it was a large tumor in her brain. But, thankfully with her Synths, we had managed to trial and error an enhancement for her powers. Like Nora, she received all the base improvements, but the real prize was the upgrade to her power. We had fiddled around with it a touch, and we discovered the scope of what she could control could be increased since any improvement in numbers or range was a dud. 

Taylor had specialized in insects or simple crustaceans, as lobsters and crabs fell under her scope but Mirelurks hadn't. Now they did, along with reptilians, mammals, and most interesting of all, supermutants. Which told me that with further upgrades, she could potentially control people like Cipher did. 

Following her was Robin. 

Her power was very similar to mine on a genetic level, which made me suspect that my power also stemmed from a ‘Devil Fruit’ as hers did. The power was grafted onto our DNA, making it easy to target. The result being a similar breakthrough that I had with my powers upon consuming the serum that enhanced me. Things that she had only theorized about maybe being able to do were suddenly not only possible, but easy. 

“Oh my,” Robin remarked, but the words didn't come out of her mouth. Instead, the words were uttered by the full body clone of herself that sprouted from the ground, standing naked in the middle of the room. At least until what looked like tiny hands layered on top of each other to become the outfit that Robin currently wore. 

She was quick to grasp the possibilities that were not presented to her and begin experimentation. Meanwhile, I turned my attention to my son, Alexander. Tifa and Jessie hadn't earned an upgrade yet, while Yoruichi waved off the possibility and Jinx had already received her serum. 

My son looked up at me with vague incomprehension, not yet old enough to have that spark of consciousness. 

Alexander's DNA was interesting in a lot of the same ways that Nora's was, but also because of what he inherited from me. He didn't inherit the genetic markers for my powers, but he had inherited an… echo of them. Something similar, but inert and waiting for activation. And in our tests on synths… 

Alexander gurgled happily as I took longer with his powers. He would grow older until he reached his physical prime before his aging stopped. His strength would come slower, but he’d still be superhumanly strong, durable, and so on. It was just a delayed delivery so Nora wouldn’t have to deal with an infant with superpowers. 

It was his power that was the most fascinating of all. It was similar to Nora’s, one based on adaptation, but it had a foothold in my power that made it… metaphysical. I actually had something to compare it to -- Mahoraga. The adaptation to attacks, rendering Mahoraga immune to them, as well as adapting offensively to bypass defenses. I wasn’t sure what it would look like in practice, but his power was in the same vein. 

Picking the boy up, I looked into his eyes and I found a smile tugging at my lips. 

“I can’t wait to see what you grow up into,” I told him honestly. A rebellious son who hated everything about me and my methods. An arrogant boy who wanted to supplant his father. A monster without equal that was as much of a plague to the worlds he laid claim to as I was. Or maybe he would be the kind of man who didn’t feel a need to use his power? Humble, calm, easy-going? 

I didn’t know. 

And that was exciting. 

… 

I stood alone in Central Park, seeing traces of the final battle with Homelander still lingering. Once upon a time, the park had been a stretch of nature in a dense urban city. Then it became a cultivated farmland meant to feed more people than it could. Now, it languished in waste. Abandoned and forgotten, picked clean of any resources or tools, with everything else left to rot. 

“This is a very dangerous course of action,” Robin warned me. “Kaido came from my universe. He is one of the Four Emperors of the Sea and the King of Beasts. Even the World Government feared him, Law.” She stood with me, for now, openly wearing her concern on her face and she hadn’t stopped wearing it since she heard my plan. 

Yamato’s memories told me where Asami had sent Kaido. With the Dias, we could make a jump through time and space to pick him up. It was something that I was content to let linger, since there was no rush on picking him up. And while I found Kaido to be a funny guy according to her memories, I did agree with Robin. He would be my toughest fight yet. Even more so than Sukuna or All Might. 

“We have the war materials to deal with Noxus,” Robin continued, really trying to talk me out of this. It was the first time she had been this stressed about something, and try as she might, she couldn’t completely hide the undercurrent of fear she felt. 

She was right there as well. We had enough aces up my sleeve that I felt that the war with Noxus was firmly in our favor -- we had power armor, supermutants, a monstrous tech advantage, and Taylor had picked up a chemical weapon that made mustard gas seem healthy from some old casino. Even if our troops faltered and our tech failed, I was confident that between me, Sukuna, Yoruichi, and now Robin, victory was all but assured. And, failing that, we had enough nukes to destroy all of Runeterra several times over. 

“You saw her memories, Robin,” I replied, doing some warm-up stretches.”Theres a window of opportunity that could close.”

The reason for my haste was simple. 

Yamato’s memories of the map that she saw when Kaido was punted off to a new universe didn’t match our map of the universe. Two worlds were missing. 

We didn’t know why. It was possible it was a natural phenomenon. It was also possible that worlds and World Lines could ‘move’. In the end, as much as we relied on the Dias, we didn’t know that much about the vast multiverse we traveled through. But there was another possibility that I put forth - enemy action. 

Asami might be hiding worlds from us. Protecting them with some kind of anti-detection shielding, and Jinx and Sage were only starting to guess how such a thing was possible. Despite knowing that it was there through her memories, the Dias couldn’t even try to jump there because as far as it was concerned, there was nothing to jump to. That meant promising worlds could be taken from us… just as it could be a means to measure Asami’s own expansion. 

“It’s a race for resources,” I said, touching my toes for a few seconds before standing on my tiptoes with my arms raised high over my head. “And Kaido is a resource.”

She was scared that I’d lose. Robin didn’t say it, but it was obvious in how she held herself. Her arms crossed, almost as if she was hugging herself, biting her bottom lip, and concern showing in her eyes. So, I offered one more reassurance, “And if worst comes to worst? I’ll just run away. Pop open a Dias, I’ll hop through it, and we’ll leave him to kick rocks until I’m stronger.”

Robin sent me a Look that was filled with so much doubt that someone else might find it offensive. I just laughed. “I promise,” I swore, holding up a pinky. That got a crack in her worry, earning a small breath before she raised her hand up and hooked her pinky around mine. 

“Don’t underestimate him, Law,” Robin warned. “I’ll never forgive you if you die here.”

I nodded, squeezing her pinky with my own, “You know how to motivate a man.” I remarked, accepting the promise. Another time, I could have died on this battlefield and I would have been happy. Content. No doubt I would have died smiling. But that time had passed. Now I had too many things to live for to carelessly throw my life away. 

At that, a sly smirk tugged at her lips, “And if you win… I want to have a baby, Law.” That made my heart still in my chest and now she smiled at my expression. “It’s quite unfair that Nora is the only one to have a child.” 

I took in a deep breath, giving her pinky one more squeeze. “Poor Kaido,” I mused, a smile tugging at my lips. “He doesn’t stand a chance anymore.” Now I was motivated.  

Robin lingered for a moment more, seeing my confidence and taking reassurance from it. Then she crossed her arms, and she vanished in a flurry of flower petals. I sensed her appear some distance away; her ability to teleport was new, and she was getting the hang of it. In any case, it was far enough for me to look to the handheld button that was connected to the Dias. And, with only a moment of thought, I pressed it. 

In the space before me, a Dias portal immediately sparked to life, a floating hole in reality to a desolate world. 

“Eh?” Came a low rumble from the other side of the Dias, and every hair stood on end as I felt his presence through my Haki even before I saw him. I couldn’t see his face, just a barrel-shaped chest and legs that seemed almost too small to remain upright for such a massive body. A hand reached out, grabbing the edge of the portal before the man himself began to pull himself through it. 

Kaido was absolutely massive. Over twenty feet tall, taller if you count the horns. Dark hair, goatee, sun-kissed skin from a lifetime at sea. One arm was covered in golden scale tattoos, while on the opposite side was a large X-shaped scar near a hip and going up to his chest. 

Strong. Standing in his presence reminded me of Sukuna, only intensified a hundred times over. If I stood before him a few years earlier, after Homelander, I probably would have wavered. The sky above sensed his arrival as the clouds above began to stir, darkening as if to warn of the storm to come. 

The ground trembled when Kaido fully emerged from the portal, planting his kanabo into the dirt as he looked around with vague interest. “Bah. This isn’t Wano,” he observed, his gaze sweeping over the broken skyscrapers and the empty fields before his gaze landed squarely on me. “And who are you supposed to be?”

I smiled, letting my own Haki show and the sky above churned. A flash of excitement entered Kaido’s eyes as the clouds were divided, the air growing thick with tension as the portal closed behind him. 

“Do you want to talk, or do you want to fight?” I asked him directly, feeling a hum of anticipation in my veins. 

“Uororororo!” Kaido laughed, Conqueror’s Haki rolling off of him like a tidal wave as it danced over the weapon that he shouldered. “You’re a funny brat. If you don’t die, then I’ll let you join my crew!”

“And if you survive, I have the feeling we’re going to become great friends!” I returned, a smile consuming my face. 

We both moved at once and the sky above split from our clash.