so this was going to be one of the special bonuses, but then i decided to make it a sidestory instead.......... you get a glimpse into Alts old life in this chapter, and it hints at the future. the school ark man, the school ark is gonna be SOOOOOO fun to write with all these shocking meetings Alt is gonna have..............

anyway, i'm off to write chapter 23 now.

Enjoy!!!!!

Anna L. Francis

I toasted the air with the half empty bottle of rum in my hands. I was sitting on the floor leaning back against my couch and watching the aging reporter woman on the television tell the world all about what started the drunken spiral of depression I have been in since I got the call.

“And now back to our coverage on the tragic death of renowned Physicist, Chemist, and Inventor Daniel C. louis. A child prodigy, Dr. Louis had graduated with his first doctorate in physics from Faris Smith University of Advanced Sciences, at the young age of 16. He continued to further his education at the university by quickly obtaining doctorates in both chemistry and engineering, all before the age of 19. Dr. Daniel Louis had written multiple theories in recent years that have shaken the scientific community, but he is probably best known for the invention and development of the: 407 Type Lazarus, or as t is more commonly called by the public and the late Dr. louis, the Lazarus Pit. This revolutionary device was able to prolong a person’s natural lifespan, cure most common muscular ailments, and seemed to slow the aging process. After the development of this miraculous device, Dr. Louis had stepped out of the spot light and back into obscurity.

Doctor Daniel C. Louis was reported to have been found dead from a gunshot wound to his sternum earlier today. He died at the young age of 24, and the scientific community as well as the world at large shall mourn his passing.

More on this story later at 11:00.” (Television reporter woman)

“PFFT! As if that was all Danny did……. He has done more than you people could even dream was possible outside of some movie or comic!!! But you wouldn’t know that would you? You never even KNEW Danny!!!” (Anna)

I threw the bottle hard at the TV breaking the expensive holographic screen into little shards. It was fine I had more, a LOT more. I picked up a bottle that looked full from the pile scattered around me.

Shit…… that was Danny’s……….. Shit………… Danny…………………. Sorry about that Danny……..

{You sure have turned to self-destruction quickly, haven’t you Anna?} (???)

“Fuck you!!! I just lost my BEST FUCKING FRIEND!!!! Cant you leave me alone for ONCE, ONCE Bartius!?!?!?!?!” (Anna)

{…………… you just spoke out against me……….. how? And better yet WHY?} (Bartius)

I felt my face scrunch up in anger, it was something that Danny always used to tease me about. Fuck I wish he still could…

“I don’t know, Maybe I’m angry and drunk and fucking miserable because I got I call from the police this morning to tell me my BEST FUCKING FRIEND was DEAD and now you, the asshole who STARTED all this bullshit, has come to rub everything in by just being FUCKING REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I DON’T KNOW BARTIUS!!!! WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME WHY THE FUCK AM I ‘SPEAKING OUT’ AGAINST YOU!?!?!?!?!” (Anna)

{You were never this emotional or devastated whenever someone died before…………… Do you need to……. Talk…….. about him Anna? I could…… listen…… if you want?} (Bartius)

“No, I’m done reporting on Danny to you. He’s dead, he isn’t this grand ‘threat to the Multiverse’ you said he was, he was just a guy. A special, sweet, and genius guy sure, but just a normal mortal human like the rest of us in this world, his death proves THAT much at least. H-happy now-w?” (Anna)

Fuck…….. Here come the waterworks again…………… Danny wouldn’t want me here crying my eyes out over him. He’d say something like “What the hell Anna? I thought that big girls didn’t cry, or did the song that you used to make me sing along to whenever you were upset as a kid lie to us? I always had a suspicion that song was mostly just angsty Bullshit……… now I have PROOF!!! Here Anna, face the camera so I can prove my theory to the rest of the world!!!” or something just as stupid to get me to laugh…. Then again Danny isn’t here, is he?

{………………………………Anna, this isn’t like you. In all your incarnations since you have been my Chosen, this is the first time you have mourned an observation target. It is also the first time you have spoken out against me. I think this may confirm my worst fears…….} (Bartius)

I wiped my face on my arm, and took a deep pull on the bottle in my hand again. I was a wreck, and staying in this big flat that used to be OURS and is now just mine isn’t helping. I keep looking around and thinking about how everything is just too big for one person. For just me.

“I don’t fucking care anymore Bartius……… just leave me alone for a while ok?…. I want to be alone right now……” (Anna)

{………… did you love him? Is that why you are acting this way, Anna?} (Bartius)

“Just leave me alone. Please………” (Anna)

{……………. Very well, you will be given a new task soon Anna. Be ready.} (Bartius)

The screen disappeared, and with it the building pressure in my whole body. It was so hard to talk with Bartius in a world with no mana. I still remember the time when I got so sick from the pressure on my soul I couldn’t even think straight let alone move. Luckily Danny was there to nurse me back into shape. Just like he always is-..... was.

I even told him about Bartius by accident when I was drunk once…. I told him all about how I had been talking with him since I was a baby, and that idiot just took it in stride and told me how cool it was to have an ACTUAL voice in my head and how he was jealous of me.

I was letting myself drift off to the comfort of sleep. letting my drunkenness lead me deep into dreams and memories of the person that was all at once the reason I was born, my target, the friend I have known my whole life, and the one I grew to love………………………….

I had known Danny since we were three. He was the weird, overly friendly kid next door who always had to be doing SOMETHING. His mom had left the family recently after he turned three and his dad was almost always away from home. Because of that, Danny spent most of his childhood living with me and my parents. Danny latter told me his dad was gone so often because he was off doing some top secret stuff for the government.

Danny always thought that it was cool, that he was like some sort of lead character in some anime due to his absentee family. At the time I thought it was just very convenient for my mission, but as we grew I started to resent his family for abandoning him. I was also sort of grateful they did, it meant I could spend more time with him.

Danny was always smart, he could talk as easily with an adult as he could with any kid. I was like that too of course, but I had the excuse of being a soul that had lived Bartius knows however many lives. I found out JUST how smart Danny was when we entered primary school though. While the rest of the class and I were coloring, that kid was doing things that stumped ME. He was six when he made his first theorem, it was disproven, but still.

As I went through school like a normal, if smarter than average, girl, skipping only the fourth grade. Danny went through school like it was a joke. He skipped second, third and fourth grade by testing out of them. He spent all of two weeks in fifth grade before he was sent off to middle school.

By then he was more interested in his own hobbies then a school education. If he wanted to learn something, he would research it for a few days, then when he was satisfied he had learned enough he would stop. Danny’s hobbies were rather simple, he liked stories that weren’t about real life, at least not in this world, and he liked to make things. He amassed one of the largest collections of comics, games, manga, anime, and movies I had ever seen with money he got from doing Bartius knows what for our local mafia. The kid was fucking eight and he was already a respected honorary member of the El’Tenino family. They even helped my parents throw both our ninth birthday parties. Those parties, they were awesome....

Around when we were both six Danny had begun his mission of converting me into the faith of what he called the “Holy Church of Geekdom. Long may it prosper!” he had succeeded by the time we were ten….

When I was ten I had managed to start getting my teachers attention with my grades, but Danny had already managed to become a freshmen in high-school. I was never sure how he managed it, but he was actually fairly popular and well liked there. Hell, Danny managed to be well liked everywhere he went. It was like he radiated some sort of happy “be my friend” aura or something. Even I had managed to practically forget my mission and became his REAL friend within my first year with him.

By twelve he was inviting me to his senior prom dance. It was unbelievably awkward for two little kids in a tux and dress to slow dance at a teenager’s electro-pop themed prom. Especially when we were the only ones doing that while everyone else did the random teenage flailing they thought was dancing, but it was a fun night. I think that was the first time I noticed that I had more than feelings of friendship with him.

If the dancing didn’t prove it to me, his taking me to the roof for both of our first kisses did. All he said was “isn’t this what a guy is supposed to do with the girl he likes on prom night? Come on Anna you can’t be THAT out of the loop…..”

That and his father’s funeral two years later, when he held me as he cried and only let me into his room at our house for a week, were the only times he ever hinted that he might have liked me as something more than a friend.

I learned only later in our teens that he never had felt for me what I did for him. It was when I took him out on our one and only “Date” date. We did the classic of dinner and a movie, and I even planed on losing my virginity that night. That is I did right up until we were both on a bed, and he told me that he couldn’t go through with it. That I was his “Best friend, and I love you Anna, but not in THAT way. I’m sorry I lead you on this long, I just didn’t know what to do when I first noticed how you felt, so I played dumb. That was wrong of me, but you shouldn’t have your first time with someone who doesn’t love you back.” Turns out he got more out of anime than just crazy invention ideas, it taught him how to play at being hopelessly dense well enough to fool me.

Hurt and more than a little spiteful I went out and seduced some random guy into sex that night. I came back in tears and more than a little drunk talking about how sorry I was and that I was an idiot. Danny stayed with me all night and let me get everything out, all while I used him as my tissue/hug-pillow.

We came to the agreement that we would always be best friends, and that this day, with all its mistakes and regrets, would be behind both of us forever. Luckily for both of us my parents were gone for the weekend.

Things were fairly calm after that. Danny was in collage wowing the world with science stuff, and I was in high school lamenting my feelings, puberty, my mission, and my life in general. We were awkward around each other for a few months, but we got back to normal within the year. In fact I think we might have been closer, which of course was like torture for me.

I never did get over my feelings for Danny, sure nothing happened, and I dated other guys, and even a few girls, but nothing ever came of it. Those relationships always just seemed so hollow for me.

When I entered collage, Danny had already gotten a flat and a job with the government doing secret things that he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about. He wasted no time whatsoever in telling me all about it. How area 51 was real, that the alien crash of Roswell actually happened, that the government was hiding a robot army, and that their snack machines needed more variety. He held nothing back, and didn't seem to care he was sharing top secret information people got killed over.

I moved in with him within the month. I did so to satisfy both Bartius and my own twisted need to torture myself with the presence of my unrequited love for someone who I would never have.

Things were awesome in life for a long time. Danny swapped jobs, girlfriends, and projects so often I couldn’t even keep track of them all if I tried. The big ones stick in my mind though.

When he told the government to go fuck themselves because “Danny has decided that he can only ride the science train SOOOOOLLLLLLLOOOOO. Plus, Anna, area 51 gets REALLY old after you get past the alien space craft, robots, and all the clones…..” he made a start up with a few engineering and science major friends from his collage, the young, eager, high school science teacher who let him make a ‘Mad Science’ club in her room afterschool, and a sponsor with too much money for his own good. Together they made an A.I that Danny named TAI or Taia. It stood for Tactical Assault Intelligence…. Danny said that “Every AI has to either be fundamentally against humanity for some reason, or fall in love. I decided to try and make one who would do both….. What? She was made with the three laws of robotics in mind, and she doesn’t have access to any real weapon systems….. She promised me she wouldn’t do anything to OUR country. I call that a win in my book!”. Taia turned out to be a really cool person, well for an independent intelligence that was created to do everything from winning wars to cleaning up the house. She was eventually confiscated by the same agency Danny quit, but she still kept in contact with us. Honestly I think she did only to have excuse to talk to Danny again, she was always closest to him and she never did take to the guy who they brought in for her to fall for….

Then there was the pod that followed around a particularly nasty ex of mine who had not only played around with other girls on the side, but also spread rumors about me to anyone who knew me. The pod played recordings of all his bullshit, lies, contradictions, and then it projected a montage of his most embarrassing moments at random intervals. It was made to be military grade and wouldn’t be damaged by anything less than a large force explosion. It followed that asshole for a month and caused him to lose his job and get dumped by the other three girls he was with.

Then there was that portal-gun project he started, but never finished…..

Danny was always doing so many things at once. Yet he always seemed to have time to hang out with me, catch a drink, then chill in front of a screen either gamming or watching something.

I barely remember the times I had to report his activities to Bartius, most of the time I forgot Bartius even existed. I’m not sure if that had ever happened in my other incarnations, but in THIS one I was fine with it. I think I even began to resent Bartius some from his reminding me that if HE ever thought Danny was this “threat to the multiverse” I would have to kill him, at every check in. I began to doubt I ever could follow through with that.

Bartius

My suspicions were confirmed. The demi-divine WAS a threat to the multiverse. The child was some sort of Avatar of corruption, not truly dangerous as he was in his old world, but now.

Now this child has been reincarnated, into an Origin world no less, and has begun to learn about his origins and powers…… if I let this THING grow, he might become the next Kalissia………

No, that couldn’t happen. When SHE was active, she had destroyed, corrupted, and enslaved so much. The divines, and the many others that aided them, had lost so many of our own in the cause to end her madness…..

I will not sit by and watch this happen again! He wasn’t able to take my chosen from me, and by being near him for so long she has developed a sort of resistance to his corruption. Yes, I can send her to end this threat right here and now! She knows how he acts, how he THINKS, she’ll be the perfect weapon to snuff out this threat before it grows.

I looked into the scroll that showed the soul now known as Anna, as she sleept. Her dreams were a drunken rush of memories. She was also crying in her sleep.

My poor chosen…… your soul has been with me for so long. You have lived over 100,000,000 years of lives in service to me. If this is where you wish to part ways, I shall not stop you, but I need you for one last task………

She had already taken in so much alcohol in so short a time, it wouldn’t take much to push her body over the edge of what it could take. She would end this life painlessly in her sleep.

Forgive me my friend, but this has to be done, and I can’t take the chance of cleansing and refitting your soul in a Void if one has already claimed the threat as her own. They would not allow me to use them in any way against this threat if one has already claimed him.

I watched as Anna’s chest stopped its steady rise and fall. I would need to prepare her for what was to come. With so much attention focused on this thing, I couldn’t risk myself being discovered by communicating with her soul. ESPECIALLY not on an Origin world. Even my failed attempts to view him had garnered too much attention from beings that scare even me. If he had not temporarily revealed himself to all higher powers of the multiverse with his threats, I may have never found him even with all my power. No I would need to leave her a message with her task and leave her to do this alone. It was the only way……………..

“Anna, listen to me this is Bartius………………………..” (Bartius)

Anna

When I woke up, I was surrounded by a warm sensation that I had come to instantly recognize from the memory holdovers of my past incarnations.

I was in a womb. Again.

Which meant I had died. Again.

Which is weird since I still have all my last life’s memories. I even remember my name, and THAT is usually the first thing to go in the Void….

I wiggled a bit, I must be fairly well along into my development. I even have little hands and feet, I can feel them, and not the weird alien preformed things a fetus usually does.

Well this could be a lot worse I guess, it is nice that I’ll probably be born soon. Oh and there is that perk of keeping my memories, although it might’ve been easier if I couldn’t remember Danny, but I also don’t want to forget him either. Emotions are fucked up things………

Anyway, I may have to thank Bartius when we talk next, this was so far the best and easiest reincarnation I’ve ever had.

………..oh shit……….. Someone is going to find my old body dead on the floor where I had passed out. Next to a pile of booze and rum bottles……most of which being empty……….. Well on the bright side, at least Danny died in a way my parents could be proud of, trying to protect someone…… Not in Some drunken grief fueled bender...…… Oh SHIT!!! My PARENTS just lost Danny AND me in the same week......... They are gonna be dev-.......

{Anna, Listen this is Batius. The threat of the one you once knew as Daniel C. Louis is still present. I have reincarnated you in the same world as he is now in. It is also why I have left you your memories of the last life you have had, to help you guard against him. The threat is now called Altorus Phantus, and he is a race known as Vampeerus, similar to what you know best now as a vampire. You must slay him, slay even his very soul. I won’t be able to contact you in this life, I can’t even watch over you, but I have given you parting gift. I have released you from my service, and shall find another chosen to send to this world to aid you in ending this threat, and after this last task your soul will be free. I have also used much of my power to incarnate you as one of the elven in this world, you will have a long life in which to enjoy yourself and your memories. I wish you good luck, my former chosen. Goodbye Anna……} (Bartius)

…....... So Danny is here too? AND he’s a vampire now? Fuck he must be enjoying himself with THAT……………..

………………………….wait did my boss, the boss I might not even like all that much anymore, just ask me to kill my best friend AND his soul…… while he fired me?...... after he caused my parents untold grief by causing my apparent death?........................ FUCK THAT!!!!!!! I’m not gonna let Danny go and die on me again, and I sure as SHIT won’t be the one to kill him!!! Altorus Phantus huh? Ok fine, I got it memorized now. Just got to-……….

{…………..Oh and Anna, don’t feel bad about leaving behind family or friends, a….. what was it again? Golem? Homunculus?......... anyway something Called TAI destroys all life on the planet a few days after your death. It intercepted some news program, made a few calls that never connected, then launched all the weapons the world had developed at the world at large…… why some divine would ever want THAT as a chosen I’ll never know………. Anyway you should just move on and forget about your old world. Just focus on this new world. If you meet a man named Falcus you can trust him, he is my new chosen after all………….} (Bartius)

…………………………………… Taia……………………. Nuked the world…………… you know Danny, when you said she was BETTER than Skynet, I thought it meant that she WOULDN’T go evil on us, not that she was more efficient at destruction……………… well I guess that fixes dad’s old kidney cancer concern…………… I hope mom and dad reincarnate in a nice new world, one WITHOUT murderous A.I…………….

As I contemplated the fact that Bartius had also sent some random other person to "help" me kill the guy I loved, even if he was a little different now… and might sparkle during a bright day….. Or burst into flames….

Is it wrong I’d rather him burst into flames? Does that make me a bad Friend? No. No, Danny would rather have it that way……….

I felt myself begin to move by way of a tugging force, and if I tried really hard I could see a light.

So it’s time already? Ok, I’m ready for this. Look out Danny/Altorus your best friend is coming, whether you’re ready or not

LEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY JJJJJJEEEEEEEEEENNNNNKK-………………………..

ok so yes Alt might not be the SMARTEST(the most clever) in this world, but he is definitely one of if not the most KNOWLEDGEABLE in his fields of study. this is also why he was so good with alchemy and enchanting, even though both fields are damn near impossible to pick up without years of study, let alone become proficient......

anyway theorize first, thank me second. i'm curious to see how the fans use that last Theorist guide post with the info that was given away in this chapter.....

oh and the way things are going so far there is only one new review, so i'm planing on not writing that extra bonus. you all can prove me right or wrong, but honestly i'd rather you keep this up so i can give another Paton only bonus. they only really have one now......................

Author Out......