You wake up in a dark metal box filled with blood and rotting things. Huh. Well you can honestly say that this is not the weirdest place you have ever woken up. Probably not even in your top ten, though you're pretty sure it's in your top twenty. You try to remember how you got here, but a chorus of voices is speaking/scream/singing/whispering at you, none of them are speaking any language you understand. This frankly makes it a pain to concentrate.

You stand there for several minutes trying to remember how you got here, when you realize you have no idea who you are, let alone where you are. Everything is a big blank space before you woke up just now, which makes it weird that you remember waking up in other places and the same time don't. You feel like this is not the first time you forgot who you were either, which just puzzles you even more. You spend several more minutes contemplating how one can simultaneously remember and not remember something, and conclude that you are way to sober to be thinking those kinds of thoughts.

You decide to instead to focus on where you are. You think you have been buried alive in some sort of metal coffin, judging from the smell with a corpse. Fortunately there appears to be light coming from behind you, so you're not surrounded by several feet of dirt, unless somebody put a light source in your coffin. You're not sure why somebody would do that, but you suppose that religion makes people do strange things. You don't have enough room to turn around and see what the light is though.

Actual now that you think about maybe you where buried dead and you are in fact a zombie and it's you that smells bad. Do zombies have a sense of smell? You don't thinks so, but you have never been a zombie before you can't be sure. You waste several more minutes debating your undeath, before deciding that you don't care, because you now have headache from the smell and all the people in your head trying to get your attention.

You're kind of mad that you got a headache without even getting drunk first, which is just unfair. You decided that you're tired of standing here in this stinky coffin, when you could be doing better things, like getting drunk. You wrack your brain for ways to escape, before deciding on using brute force to make your way out.

It's time to blow this popsicle stand. You have trouble picking up momentum due to the cramped space in the coffin, but you are hoping that your zombie strength will pick up the slack. You slam your fist in to the side of the metal coffin. Thump. Ow. Okay you think that you may have broken your hand punching the wall. The wall is also completely undamaged. Okay then, maybe you need to activate your undead powers first, to break out. Now how to tap into your inner necrotic energies, maybe if you think zombie thoughts you'll get zombie strength?

You concentrate with all your might on zombie activities like shambling, moaning, and the hunger for brains. You let a moan of "braaaaains" and swing your fist into the wall again. Motherfucker. Okay maybe you shouldn't have used your broken hand again. You glare at your hand that dares to fail you again and again, its betrayals are stacking up and you are beginning to wonder if it's plotting against you. Your focus is on the pain that your traitorous hand is maliciously forcing upon you, you wish that it would stop the bastard. You feel a warm sensation building up in your body, quickly getting hotter and hotter. You feel that if you hold onto it any longer it will burn you, so you force the energy out of your body.

Your hand miraculously stops hurting and in fact looks good as new. Cool. Looks like you got zombie regeneration or something. You decided to forgive your errant limb for its earlier misdeeds since it chose to redeem itself. You are nothing if not merciful. You stare at your hand contemplatively wondering what else it could do. You focus on your hand again, but instead of wishing the pain away, you instead think thoughts of destruction towards your metal prison. You feel the warm sensations building up in your body again and once again release it before it gets too hot. Your hand becomes wreathed in electricity for about a second before going out.

Wait zombies don't have lightning powers or do they? Maybe you're a Frankenstein? Whatever, it's not important. You summon lightening to your hand again and plunge it in to coffin. Your hand slides through the wall like a hot knife through butter. It only occurs to you afterwards that metal conducts electricity and you could have just electrocuted yourself to death. So maybe you are immune to your electricity or electricity in general? Also you pretty sure that electricity does not allow one to cut through solid steel now that you think about it. Whatever, your magic zombie lightning does what it wants to, when it wants to and nobody can tell it otherwise.

You pull your hand out of the hole you made. The hole looks about two feet deep, beyond the metal appears to be some sort of chalky substance and wood. You begin to wail away at the wall ripping large chunks out of the wall. It takes you less than two minute for you to break out through the other side. You squeeze your way through the opening and look around. You appear to be in a hallway that is surprisingly well light. When you look up you see glowing squares attached to the ceiling. You are impressed that they can afford so many magic items of light.

You think you may be in a temple of some sort of sun god judging from how bright it is in here, so you should probably get out of here fast as you can. Sun gods tend to like smiting the undead and you don't want the get your ass smote by some priest, you've only been unalive for like 10-20 minutes tops. Fortunately you see a door made of glass, fancy, that appears to lead outside. So you scuttle over to it and go outside.

You behold a city made of steel and glass, many of the buildings tower above you. You have no idea where you are. You decide that you best way to get unlost is to get even more lost until you know where you are. It's the perfect plan and nothing could possible go wrong. You are a genius! You close your eyes and do a pirouette. You immediately slip and fall due to the gunk on your shoes. You land face first into the ground smashing your nose. Today is just not your day, like at all.

You sit up and pull more energy through your body to fix up your nose and then you take stock of the rest of your body to check it for more injuries. You appear to be covered in blood and other vile fluids, with bits of cloth pads sticking to you. Gross. You consider how you are going to get all this crap off of you when you feel your necrotic energies building up again. When you release it this time you feel a rubbing sensation all over your body and clothes.

When you look down you notice that all the grime on your skin and clothes are gone. The pads have fallen to the ground and they look good as new. Actually so does the ground in a 15 foot radius circle around you. So you have super zombie cleaning powers? Okay maybe you are not zombie, you are 95% sure that the zombies don't have good hygiene and if they had cleaning powers, they totally would.

Maybe you are a lich? They can use magic and you think that you could be using magic. But then where is your phylactery? Shit. You hope nobody smashes it up, you better be careful in case somebody did. What were you doing again? Right! You were getting lost to get unlost. With a skip to your step you head in the direction you are facing.

To your relief you find that you are wandering away from the buildings that tower above the skyline. You are pretty sure that buildings are not supposed to be that tall and they could fall over any second now. As you move through the city you see people whizzing by in metal carriages, you make sure to stay out of their way, if you got hit you are pretty sure you would splatter and no amount healing would fix that. As you move forward the buildings become more and more rundown. You keep your eye out for bars to end this cursed sobriety, but so far you have not seen any.

As you are crossing the street you spot man with a spirit floating behind him. The man's face is empty of all emotions and his eyes are those of a dead man. The spirit looks like a weird hodgepodge of a tiger and an elephant. You feel a itching at the back of your head as you stare at it. Its name is on the tip of your tongue. Baku. That's it, it's a Baku! If you remember right they are spirits that eat nightmares. However sometimes if they are malicious they will also eat dreams and hope of their target. That poor man! You glare at the Baku with your fists clenched. You have to do something to free this man from its hold.

Iwao was simple going through the motions of life these days. He took no joy in anything he did. He tried so many different things that others enjoyed but nothing moved him anymore. He remembered a time when he had dreams and goals. But the desire for those things left him when had shattered and turned to ash. He only lived to serve Kenta's whims now. They had known before Leviathan tore Japan apart, before he broke. Kenta was everything he was not. He was filled with passion and fire. Iwao had no dreams so he would make Kenta's become true.

He was going on his daily walk. It was something he used to do before he died. It had long ago lost all meaning, but now he did it out some sort of ritual. As he walked done the sidewalk he noted a girl coming the opposite direction. Her face sported a manic smile that was far too wide to be called pretty. Her eyes where such a bright blue that they seemed to glow. She skipped instead of walking and was singing. The words were nonsense, but they resonated deeply into his mind.

When she looked in his direction the smile of her face died, transforming into a visage of rage. Her hands were clenched so tightly that they were bleeding. She marched towards him, her stride determined. Iwao tensed preparing for a fight if she attacked, but she stopped about five feet away from him. "Hollow Man you are being haunted by a Baku. It is devouring your hopes and dreams. If you wish it, I can banish it for a year and a day." Her voice echoed as though dozens were speaking: some of them were feminine, others masculine, and a few otherworldly. Iwao blinked at her words. The girl was clearly insane, you could tell just be looking at her, however part of him wanted her words to be true. He stared at her in silence for a minute before he gave a jerky nod.

She took a step back and stared at the space above his shoulder, her face scrunched up in concentration. Suddenly her body seemed to spasm and then she vomited up blood. She becomes a blur, ducking and weaving as she moves away from him. Iwao is startled when she screams and claw marks appear up and down her arm. Her arm hangs uselessly at her side as she continues to dodge empty air for another thirty seconds. She then smiles and Iwao feels as if though an iron spike and been driven into his head. Even with the blinding pain he feels the emptiness that had been suffocating him pouring out of the hole in his head.

The pain stops suddenly as it started leaving a behind a warm feeling. Iwao felt tears trickling down his face. Was he crying? He could not remember the last time he had ever cried. The girl wrapped her good arm around him and pulled him into a hug. The smile that was far too large was on her face again, showing far too much bloodstained teeth, but it seemed much more comforting now. It felt nice to be held. When was the last time he had been hugged? He stood their enjoying the sensation until a thought occurred to him. 'A year and a day' before he became empty again.

Yay! You made a new friend! He is crying right now, but you can tell that they are happy tears. You sing aloud one of the songs in your head to comfort him. While you do not know what the words mean, you can feel that it is happy song of fire and rebirth. Helping people out always makes you feel warm and fuzzy. You hear a rumble and thunder clap. You look up at That-Which-Storms, the storm spirit that you summoned. It is giving its goodbyes now that it has done the services that you requested of it, before returning to the metaplane.

You let go of the Hollow Man and began to deal with your wounds. While hugs are nice your arm really hurts. You close the wound on your arm, but the damage caused by the summoning of That-Which-Storms can only be healed naturally. You had to push past your normal limits to summon a spirit strong enough to defend you from the Baku. Your hoodie sleeve is also ruined from when the Baku almost tore your arm off.

The Hollow Man speaks up as you are removing the blood from your clothes. "Do you need assistance?"

You pause as you think over his question before nodding vigorously "Yeah! I need booze so bad right now. I haven't had anything to drink for an hour!" Just saying it out load makes you shudder at the thought of being deprived of alcohol for so long.

He blinks and says "Are you not too young to be drinking?"

Wait how old are you anyway? Well that does not matter anyway you are never too young to stopped drinking. "Nope!" you chirp.

He stares at you for second and then shrugs. "I have a friend who has plenty of alcohol if you wish it."

You eagerly nod and follow behind him. As you walk you feel another song bubbling up in your throat so you let it out. The song starts out happy and sweet, but as it goes on it becomes melancholy and bitter. The Hollow man looks over at you and asks "What is that you are singing?"

You pause as you try to put the song into words and then you explain. "It's a song about two girls that become sisters. They live a happy peaceful life, but then one day the First girl's mother dies. She is distraught and her father broken. The Second puts her back together again and the two become closer than ever."

You stumble here because you feel an overwhelming sadness as you continue to speak "While the First leaves on a trip the Second is attacked by bandits, but is saved by a hunter. The Second goes mad with fear, desperate for help she returns to the Hunter and asks for advice. The Hunter tells 'There are two kinds of people the predators and the prey. Become a predator and no one shall ever harm you again.'"

Your face feels wet now, which is strange because it is not raining. "When the First returned the Second decides that she is prey and tormented for it. She hoped to turn the First into a predator like herself, but when that did not work. She grew to hate the First for being weak. The First is lost and confused by the Second's betrayal and does not know what to do, so does nothing. For two years she torments the First, before finally giving up on her and sealing her in a tomb darkness and filth."

The Hollow Man looks at you strangely but does not say anything. You no longer feel like speaking or singing. It is another twenty minutes before you reach your destination. When you enter the building you see a large man with steel mask and covered in dragon tattoos. Behind him towers a dragon from the east. It looks down all of you with a look of contempt and hunger in its eyes. All around you are men and woman dressed in green and red.

The Hollow Man and the Wyrm are speaking to each other in a language that you do not know. As the conversation goes on it gets more heated to the point where the Wyrm catches fire. He points at you and speaks "Kill the girl. She has mastered Oni Lee" The people in green and red draw weapons and move towards you.

You only have time to think 'What in the world is an Oni Lee?' When the Hollow Man suddenly appears in front of you and grabs you. He then throws you up into air into the arms of another Hollow Man. He spins you around and tosses you towards a closed window which is then 'quickly smashed open when a different Hollow Man diving through it. You then land on the Hollow Man's back, who was waiting to catch you outside, and clamp on for dear life. He immediately begins to run down the street as you hold on to him while trying to process what just happened.

At this point you hear a roar and the Wyrm leap through the same window you did and running full pelt at you. Nope. You don't want to fight a dragon at all. They are nature's answer to overpopulation and all around bullshit. You wrack you brains for a way to slow him down, before deciding to summon a spirit. The spirit of Maple Way and Evans St. rises out of the asphalt. He appears to be a man with skin of asphalt covered in graffiti. You point at Wyrm and yell "Stall him!"

Maple-Evans leaves astral space and charges the Wyrm slamming a fist of lightning and asphalt into him. The Wyrm bellows in rage and returns the blow with his own fire punch. "Thank you" you yell to Maple-Evans as you continue ride away from the fight on the Hallow Man's back. You lose sight of them when the Hallow Man rounds the corner. He runs down several more alley ways before slowing down his pace to a jog.

He turns back to looks at you and says "We should find a safe place to lay low. Unfortunately Kenta knows where most of my safe houses are, so I will have to find supplies for us later. But there are plenty of abandoned buildings in the area so we should be able to find a place to rest."

You nod, that makes sense to you. "Oh by the way what is an Oni Lee and why was the Wyrm mad that I mastered how to use it?"

He stares at you with a strange expression on his face before responding "I am Oni Lee. He thinks you are using parahuman powers to control me."

Parahuman? Must be their word for mages or something. "Wait!? The Wyrm thinks I am using mind control powers on you, why would he think that!"

The Hallow Man replies "Since I am no longer being afflicted by the … Baku, my mannerisms are very different. When Kenta accused you of mastering me, I tried to defend you. Kenta does not like being questioned and I have never done so before. This cemented in his mind that you where controlling me."

Well crap. Now you have a pissed off dragon after you for stealing his friend away from him. You brood on how one goes about proving one is not mind controlling people when the Hollow Man puts you down and moves towards a building covered in graffiti. "Wait here I will back in second." he says before turning into ash. About minute later he pops back and says "The building appears to be abandoned. We should rest here while they are out looking for us." He walks over to the door and kicks it in before walking inside. You follow him inside.

The building is pretty dusty and does not look like anyone has been here for awhile. He leads you to a room with some couches. He points to them and says "You should get some rest, I will keep watch."

You lay down on the couch. Its lumpy and dusty, but its better then the ground. You look over at him and ask "Aren't you going to get any sleep?"

He shrugs "I will be fine."

You close your eyes. You're actually pretty tired. Your day has been pretty hectic with escaping tombs, banishing Baku and fleeing dragons. Your last thought before you fall asleep is 'All that I didn't get anything to drink.'

'Today had been a disaster' thought Colin. It had just been one failure after another today. First the Hebert girl had a violent and public trigger event, when she ripped her way out of her locker and through a wall. The school had contacted the PRT as soon as they had noticed the gaping hole in the wall. But by the time they had got there it was all over the school that Hebert had triggered in the locker, yet somehow nobody knew how she had gotten in there.

Judging from the damage done to the locker and the wall, Hebert was some sort of brute or striker. Colin had sent the Wards and the rest of Protectorate out to see if they could find the girl as quickly as possible. Recently triggered parahumans were often irrational and violent, so containing before she hurt herself or others was paramount.

It was when he kept Shadow Stalker back to learn what she knew about Hebert that he stumbled across the truth. When she tried to act like she barely knew Hebert, his lie detector had gone off. After several minutes of interrogation, she finally confessed she had been involved with the locker incident. Shadow Stalker had been the one that caused the Hebert to trigger in the first place. He had been furious at her and himself. Since he was in charge of her, he was indirectly the cause of her triggering, the thought made his stomach turn.

Then the search for Hebert had to be called off when Lung had started rampaging through the docks. He had been forced to send the Wards back to base, while he and the rest of the Protectorate tried to capture Lung. Lung apparently had been fighting some sort of construct made of asphalt to the point where he was over twenty feet tall.

It vanished into thin air a minute after they joined the fight. They did not stand a chance at that point of defeating Lung. During the fight Lung had swatted him away like a fly and broken Colin's back. They retreated at that point, in the end accomplishing nothing. If it was not for Panacea he would still be crippled, because he had been to slow. It was only as he had laid there in his hospital bed stewing over his defeat and waiting to be healed, that he realized the construct may have been created by Hebert. The damage to the wall could have easily been done by the creature.

Then to top it all of some group had kidnapped Daniel Hebert, when they were busy with Lung. Mr. Hebert's neighbors said men armed with machine guns had kicked down the door and pulled him into a van, but beyond that they had no information. Somebody had called away the PRT guards that were watching him in case his daughter showed up. The caller had told them that they were needed due to the ABB moving in the force in the Docks. No one could trace were the order had come from, meaning they had a leak somewhere in the PRT.

If only he had been more efficient he could have stopped all this from happening. If had kept a better eye on Shadow Stalker the Hebert girl would not have triggered. If he had got to school faster he could have tracked down the girl before she met Lung. If had finished his tranquilizer sooner he could have stopped Lung. But no he was slow, weak and a failure. In the decade that he had been the local leader of the Protectorate what had he actually accomplished?

Empire Eighty Eight was strong as ever, no it had gotten more powerful since he took over. Azn Bad Boys came in to existence under his watch and now had free reign where ever the Empire did not contest them. He hadn't even managed to take in Skidmark and the Merchants. He looked down at his halberd on his work bench, his greatest work, completely useless to change anything. No, it was not his halberd that he needed to fix but himself, he was inefficient. If he had died today fighting Lung he doubted any one would mourn him, he had no friends, no family, no-

-Colin suddenly woke. What was he doing again? He looked down at his halberd and ideas started streaming into his head. Not plans for his halberd, but plans to make himself better, more efficient. He had been doing it wrong this whole time. He began drawing up plans for additional arms to attach to himself, after all two arms limited how much work you could do at once.

Taylor woke up inside a large stone room. The walls were covered in spiraling patterns that seemed to change shape and color as she watched them. The only exit was a large archway that seemed to lead into a black abyss. In front of her stood a fifty foot rat made of fire and lightning. He looked down at her and spoke "Hey. About time you got here."

What. Taylor said "What."

He sighed "I have been waiting for you to go to sleep, so we could finally talk. I have a lot things that we need to get through and very little time to do so."

"First thing that you need to understand that is you have been possessed by a … cluster fuck of souls. Second is that everything we talk about here, your conscious self will not really remember, however some of it will hopefully imprint on her. Third-"

"Wait back up! I am being possessed? Who are you and where am I?" Taylor interrupted.

He scowled and with irritation in his voice "None that is really important. I have much more important things we need to cover."

"I disagree!" Taylor said, glaring at the rat.

"Fine!" he exclaimed "Fucking mortals. Look some idiot mage was performing experiments with multi-dimensional magic, it went wrong and he fused his soul with someone else in a different dimension. They both went insane and few years later they tried to do the spell again and fused with someone else. Rinse and repeat thirty six fucking times. I was the familiar of the first mage and my name is Mr. Nibbles."

"That is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard" Taylor yelled and then in after thought added "and magic is not real."

"I am not having this argument with you. We have maybe five minutes tops to discuss what we need to talk about and I am not wasting my time on this." Mr. Nibbles responded.

"I-" Taylor began.

"Shut up. Third stop leaving your astral perception on all the time it leaves you exposed to astral threats like that parasite you picked a fight with earlier. You're lucky you were only fighting its avatar and it was not expecting you to even see it, alone interact with it."

"What were those things anyway? Both Oni Lee and Lung had them?" asked Taylor

He paused in thought for a second before answering "From what I can tell they are multi-dimensional creatures that have made some sort of soul pact with those humans. They are not actually on this plane of existence and they can't interact with it except through the human they made the pact with."

"So I destroyed the pact it had with Oni Lee." She asked.

"No. You just disrupted its avatar and stopped it from being able to view into this dimension for about a year. I would advise against fighting those things again like I said earlier you were very lucky last time." Mr. Nibbles responded.

He paused before continuing "Great we got off topic and we are out of time. We will have to continue this when you fall asleep again. Before you wake up there is one last thing. I have a way of increasing your magical power greatly, normally it would take a month but I can expedite the process greatly due to our unique nature. But it will be extremely painful and you will be out of commission for at least a day."

AN: I am reposting my quest from questionable questing over here. I compiled all of the chapters in day 1 into one single chapters. If you see any typos please pm. Reviews are welcome.