Chapter 3: Death, Dragon & Zombies
Death (POV)
How to train your Dragon, How to bring to life your idealized version of your man.
Diary version, By Death.
Chapter 1- This idiot dragon asked me if I've got an S&M fetish while I was fulfilling my dragon riding dream, excusing his awful attempt at deviating the conversation to the weather after a little of well-deserved bullying, it got me thinking... This idiot doesn't have a true humanoid form at the moment, he is extremely naïve after expending eons of his relative time out of society, his memory is perfect as is with most beings in our standing, and his eyes absorb any information they can glimpse at, meaning he is in an impressionable "age", besides being an idiot he is technically pleasing... Isn't this a one-in-a-era opportunity to create my perfect hubby?... He'll exist for as long as me, he can come and go out of my realm as he pleases, the more I think about it the more it looks like a great idea. Of course, there are some things that I must fix, "Trainer Death"? NO! I deserve something cute! Something romantic sounding even after I shape him into my ideal man, a 6'2" lean hunk, long straight haired, well endowed, and since I'm taking some liberties why not do some research into my "Sacred" texts, those romance writers' souls know their stuff!.
Chapter 2- After establishing my new alias, Noona, with my idiot dragon, it was time to start my next step. To inspire and impress in the mind of my future man what he is allowed to look like, I started a contest between the billions of souls that know anything about sculpting in my realm, basically the winner will get to choose the starting family in his/her next life. I couldn't rush this, NO! This IS my magnum opus I can't risk it, so I manipulated the passage of time in my realm on the section where the contest was happening, it took 100 years of relative time but I finally have my sculptress.
The interesting thing is that she is the gender-bent version of Giovanni Strazza in a universe where hentai played a major role in dictating the course of history, not the weirdest reality that I know of, it is as if she was made for this, for my magnum opus.
After finding my sculptress it was time to ransack a few planets worth of marble for her to train her abilities to the peak, then I proceeded to mold reality to show her the type of body, face, hair, hands, and some other very important male body parts that I wanted in my impressionable dragon's new self.
It took her 150 years to finish 15 full-body sculptures in several different poses that were perfect to my senses, my sculptress' soul gained a few divinities, normally I would revoke those after reincarnating her, but she will gain them back in a year after birth, because that's the level of perfection that she achieved with this work, so high level that the achievement will always follow her soul within this multiverse.
So I granted her the previously mentioned reward and told her that I would make sure her body doesn't explode with her new divinities until she is able to handle the power on her own.
Since she did such work for me I granted her one extra request, for which she asked for retractable tentacles, I confessed that I was largely confused about the wish, so she gave me her memory about a different type of "sacred" text that I'd never explored, very enlightening.
Chapter 3- After placing my new inspirational work in his training room, I was ready for the next step.
So I began teaching him how to shapeshift, and that was when it hit me, Why don't I have him develop a cute draconic shape? Something to pet, something cute, like a cat.
But he wouldn't accept it if I gave him that description so I told him about the importance of having an "infiltration" mode, for those tasks that require a stealthier approach.
I almost lost it when I saw his new Cat Form, ugh~Kyaaah~ so fucking cute! I had some trouble containing myself.
Aghh so hard to hold back! Breath in... Breath out... Ok, time to give him some motivation so that we can move to the last step of my ideal body design, after that the next stage will begin, here is where I will imprint myself on him as an attractive figure of the opposite gender, the carrot and the stick, I will show him my true self if he gets right every single one of my "requests". Because, after reading those inspirational works/masterful creations about tentacles I had some better-be-fulfill requests.
The next stage is the most important one, if I fail I will be losing this draconic hunk of mine. While he is in his most desperate times in that doomed reality I will be whispering advice in his ears, I will be established as a figure to depend on and a member of the opposite gender.
HAHAHAHAHA! I asked Tribunal to send him back to me after he properly explained his next task, that way I would reward him with my true self and some advice on his first mission.
I will be the only thing that will have a place on his mind, that and killing zombies.
Chapter 4- ...~Ahn...~Uffh... As I stood there in front of... of this work of art, this opus Dei, I had to control myself to not grab those horns as handles and ride on his- NO!... Breath in... Breath out... Don't screw it now Death! Don't screw him now Death! You're not there yet! It is not the moment YET!
I've come so far, I will not be denied my dragon because of a slip-up. He's perfect! It's what I wanted, what I needed, what I deserved but was never available on this multiverse!
I opened a portal as fast as I could to Tribunal's place and told him that Tribunal would give him some guidelines and that after that he would be sent back to me before going forward with his task; I needed to prepare myself as fast as possible to show him my true self and then sent him after giving him some "honest" advice. I can't wait until I can "ride" my dragon the next time.
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MC (POV)
Death looked a little...bothered?... But not unhealthy bothered (If that applies to a skeleton) but more like itchy? type of bothered.
This thought accompanied me as I followed the astral path, aka portal, towards Tribunal's Realm.
Apparently, there are some guidelines to be mindful and know of before going to my first task, and Tribunal will explain those to me.
After coming out of the portal I look up to the tri-headed golden body of the Tribunal and introduce myself, I'm only a little discouraged because I don't have my lucky red tie with me at the moment. If there's anything that I've learned so far is that first impressions matter after all The Aniki(...?) said "Manners Maketh Dragon".
"Hello, Boss Tribunal, I'm Aragorn the Shine Dragon"
"...? You..."
"...Boss Tribunal?"- Why is he silent?
"...Right... Nevermind! …What I have to inform you about won't take long, so you will have plenty of time for your personal affairs. I've been informed that you're most likely aware of the infinity stones on each universe and their role, is that true?"
"Yes Boss! Six stones of power that preside over six aspects of reality: time, space, reality, mind, soul and power."
"That is correct, you won't have any problems manipulating the energy of the stones since the stones will be trinkets compared to you, but never mix the stones themselves with the energy that you generate, that void energy of yours. You need to destroy the stones before destroying that reality, afterwards, when the contained energy/authority mixes with the universe you're welcome to use your energy wantonly."
"Alright! So I can use them indirectly, but not destroy them with my breath, only with the stones' energy or other means not related to my breath/void energy." It doesn't sound so complicated.
"Lastly, I'm sure you were told before, and by the looks of it you have been following your orders, but don't use your creation within the multiverse. You can go back to Death's realm before going to that doomed universe. Once you complete your task, Death will guide you to your assigned home universe"
"Thank you very much Boss!"- What does he mean by "looks of it"?
After accepting my orders I use my energy to replicate what Death did to open an astral path and my eyes to locate Death's realm. My Portal was of course shiny with white sparks, similar to the ones you make with magnesium.
"I wonder why Boss Tribunal was looking at me weirdly"
Once I reached Death's place it didn't take me long to locate her humongous presence in her palace. But when I got there I didn't find my bony Noona.
I found a gorgeous woman, long wavy lustrous black hair crowned her from her head down to the end of her back, black eyes with a soft green hue, plump lips with the upper lip colored matte black, the lower one slightly pinker when compared with her slightly tanned skin, long eyelashes protected her eyes, with soft eyebrows, her ears held a familiar shape to my own.
She was about a head shorter than my human form but tall compared to the women I remember. Beautiful and sexy curves, a well-shaped bust about the size of what I can only assume fills my big hands, all of these accentuated by a black belly dancer-like outfit, with slits for both legs, exposing her firm midriff. She was staring forcefully at my eyes, like avoiding something with her glare, with a subtle blush on her cheeks.
"..."
"...Noona?"
Death didn't answer me and walked with her hips swaying as she came close to me and just placed her hand on my chest then she softly moved upwards to the left side of my face and said with the softest voice I had heard from her:
"Aragorn, my idiot dragon, Did you go naked to your meeting with tribunal?"
"... … …What the Fuck?"
I looked down and realized that indeed, I went to my direct boss' office totally naked. I shifted to my Honey Badger shape and roared(?) in embarrassment.
"Ryahhhhh"
And started crying crystals of varied colors, while Death lifted me from the floor and carried me to her room sat on the bed, and placed me on her lap while she petted my scales and hummed me to sleep. That was the first time I slept since the destruction of my universe.
I had some nightmares, which I'd forgotten were a thing, from my time in the galactic war, but there was a warmth that comforted me while I slept. After sleeping for what felt like two days I woke up in Death's Embrace, quite poetic; it looked like she slept with me while on my honey badger form.
After admiring her beautiful face for a few more minutes it was time to wake her up, to see if I could redeem myself with my first task and overwrite my previous offense.
"Noona, Wake up!"- I told her as I softly rhythmically pushed her with my snout.
"..."
"Noona I have to go to work"
"...*yawnn*...Hello Aragorn. Is it time then?"
"Yes, I want to see if by doing a good first job I can overwrite my slip-up."
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Death (POV)
He said with his eyes alternating between blue and purple. Originally I was planning to give him some advice that would lead him to some minor problems so that he had to depend on me. But seeing as in the past few days we've been sleeping together and how uncomfortable he looks in my arms, I think I don't need to torture my idiot dragon anymore.
"Alright Aragorn, your Noona will give you some advice so listen carefully. First, go outside the multiverse, create yourself some clothes, then create about 1500 massive singularities, encase them in a void barrier and shrink them about the size of a marble, and bring them back here, since you don't own a dimension you can use the training room as yours to store your personal stuff, stuff you don't want to lose in combat."
"I've already moved the sculptures since they are no longer needed. When you need additional space just let me know."
"Then you'll go to the doomed universe and the first task is to steal and destroy the infinity stones as covertly as possible. As soon as you are done with that you'll come here and gather your singularity marbles, then place them around the center of that universe and trigger all of them at once."
"After that, it, the big crunch, will happen in the span of a few months, the resultant singularity will start eating all the universe exponentially faster, and then when all mass and space is absorbed you will fire at it with your breath. You won't have time to escape the explosion but you just need to encase your body with a void barrier, as sturdy as possible."
"Then it is just about double-checking to make sure that there's none of that viral energy left. If you start fighting against all the zombified inhabitants they'll adapt and plan against you, and you will spend decades fighting them"
"...*sniff* Thank you Noona, for helping me out! I was going to start an epic fight of one dragon versus all zombies *sniff*... By the way Noona, I never asked before but, Why is it that I can't use creation inside the multiverse?"
"You're welcome Aragorn. It is because your creation comes from your personalized void energy, when you use creation you declare a domain, if you use that domain within another more powerful domain it will backlash you, since all the multiverse is his domain the moment you start creating it will clash against you and possibly harm your soul."
"Others of our standing can use creation, but their creation is derived from his so there's no clash. You're not having it so bad yourself, Aragorn; it will normally take you about 70 hours of relative time to make a trip to the void and back, and as long as you shrink your creations you should have no problems, basically creation but with extra steps"
"That makes sense, thank you Noona, I'll go now"
Saying so I saw him create a portal as flamboyant as him and fly to the void.
"Ugh! I miss my cuddles with my dragon cat already."
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MC (POV)
Creating the singularity bombs was not so difficult, just shove a bunch of energy in creation, collapse the mass to a singular point, surround the black hole in a void barrier, similar to the one I used as scales around my soul, manipulate the barrier to shrink to the size of a marble, rinse and repeat 1499 times more and bam! you're done.
Now, picking my outfit took me longer but, after following the teachings of The Aniki, I settled for a three-piece black Dragmani suit, that looked well with my white-looking hair and crystal horns, my long sleeve shirt was white which went well with the crimson necktie, black formal shoes on and I was ready to go, well I copied the idea of the Fantastic Four about the unstable molecule fabric, so whenever I shapeshift this outfit will as well and I'll always be battle ready, I wonder if a suit-wearing dragon looks badass.
Two days later after leaving my bombs in my new room and saying my goodbyes to my Noona along with a hug, I left for my first mission.
I arrived at the outskirts of the universe, and even from there I could see how the viral energy had permeated everywhere I saw.
Although I'm not omnipresent like most of my coworkers are, I can see perfectly fine regardless of the distance within a universe, the problem is deciding what to see at and what to see through.
The good news is that it didn't take me longer than a week to find to infinity stones, that was efficient work!
The even better news is that all of them are clustered together on Earth.
The very bad news is that the stones are under constant watch and use.
The "greatest" minds of the universe are all huddled in one place creating a device with the stones to send someone to the quantum realm using Reed Richards' Dimensional machine and escape the enclosure around the universe, is a very smart and stupid way of doing it since going to the quantum realm is not that difficult but escaping outside the universe through it will probably require them centuries of research and work inside the quantum realm.
But this gave me an idea to infiltrate. First I must avoid Spiderman, if that bullshit spider sense locates me he will let everybody know. So I will use my void barrier around me to shrink myself to the nanoscale and get to the stones without alerting anybody. That's the easy part as long as I avoid Spiderman.
After getting to the stones I'm 100% sure that some sort of enclosure/barrier will happen. It's what any smart being would do, so I have to assume that I will be trapped with the stones along with the powerhouses of the universe in there.
To escape I would normally use the space stone or the time stone's energy, but I think that blowing out the whole planet with my breath should be viable as well, I'm only hindered if I can't blow the planet but here it shouldn't be a problem.
I'm just worried that If I fire my breath and the stones are implicated in it it will mess my task up.
I could protect the stones with my barrier but the boss Tribunal said that it was my energy the problem so that is out of the way, as well as using the stones directly.
Going back to using the stones' energy, most likely these geniuses stored some of the energy of the stones in batteries to use on the barrier in the enclosure.
Ughhh! Yeah, I would do that so that the imaginary thief doesn't use the stones to escape with the stones.
But there has to be a limit to that, the batteries won't have unlimited energy like the stones do, so a battle of attrition is possible, assuming that I along with the stone's energy attack the enclosure at the same time.
I only know how to use Noona's astral path for portals, so in this universe, I can only open portals within my barriers to prevent the viral energy from following me to Noona's realm, which again I can't fully form around the space stones because I could blow up the stones. Aghh! How inconvenient! I will have to watch the sorcerers of my home reality do portals to copy it, but that's for later.
I could use my telekinesis to hold everybody back while I destroy the stones, but if I were them I would have infinity stone-powered psionic dampers. I could try to use energy manipulation on the energy present in the room and blow the room up with me and them, but again the infinity stone-powered building should be able to contain the blast.
I see... I will be able to infiltrate but after being trapped I will have to fight against all while simultaneously using and defending the stones.
Once the energy on their "Infinity Batteries" is spent I should be able to portal away.
With enough time destroying the stones is simple and then is basically mission accomplished.
All of this would be easier if could snap the stones out of existence like in that movie, but if the stones mix with my energy it's game over, so I need to manipulate the energy to destroy the stones instead of using the stones directly; it's not that bad, I should manage to do it if I have a 15 min window of opportunity, but by the looks of it I won't have enough time for that.
So the first thing to do is to trap Sentry in a void barrier and ship him to the negative zone of this universe, then set up a bunch of void barriers to work as "safe" zones during the fight, if I have the time to do so.
While fighting I will have to redirect any projectiles back to the enemies, be it energy or physical projectiles, and fight in CQC; although not my specialty... if combined with my unnatural speed, reflexes, strength, and eyes I should balance any deficit out and I will theoretically be able to hold these monsters back enough to escape the enclosure.
While shrinking myself inside a void barrier moving toward earth, I gave one last prayer to The Aniki and my Noona.
{A/N:
So for those of you that don't know, Earth-Z is about two Earths on a time loop in which one Earth causes the infection of the other and so on. Normally you can't fix a time loop because you cause a paradox. But since Aragorn comes from outside the loop he just has to stop the earliest infection that will fix the other infected reality. By resetting one of them you fix both.
On cannon the infection is viral, but here we will use a viral energy.
Though fighting Sentry would have been nice, I don't think that it'll ever happen if Aragorn can just ship him to the place that is basically his kryptonite. It's simple, contain on the barrier, portal to Death's realm, portal to the negative zone of the infected universe, portal back, and done.
In the future Aragorn should be able to "see" how different people portal around, which should fix his current relay-point through Death's realm portal problem.
Just to clarify, his energy is always contained around him, so he can hold the stones telekinetically manipulate the energy in the stones and have them auto-destroy, but that takes time, 15min as explained before.
Aragorn is OP under a certain scale, he should be able to wipe the floor with Sentry pre-fusion with his Void second personality, but he is not used to fighting with his powers. Fights outside the void are different.
The next chapter is the fight and conclusion to the Earth-Z affair, Aragorn then will finally "meet" his new home.
Also in case it wasn't clear, Aragorn is superhumanly smart but he spent so much time out of society that he is being played like a fiddle by Death, combined with the fact that he trusted her since the beginning because TOAA introduced them.
Chapter Rewritten on 12/9/2023}