Within a white washed room lay eight beds, each holding a single occupant, of the eight occupants 2 were men and 6 were women. Or it would be more accurate to say there was one man, one boy and six girls, as the oldest had just turned 18 that day. Though it would be difficult to tell, as they all wore light blue hospital gowns that clung to their skin highlighting their emaciated frames, their faces were pale with sunken eyes, thin lips and their heads were shaved clean.
These eight were suffering from a new genetic disease that had recently been identified in the last fifteen years after the awakening re-wrote their world. At the turn of the 21st century a meteorite had hit their planet, none of the scientists and astronomers had noticed before it entered the atmosphere and it finally impacting the surface of the pacific at the exact second the new century began. Some began claiming it as an act of god.
These ideas were quickly spread until almost everyone believed the after people began manifesting superpowers. Some had the ability to create ice or fire, others could manipulate water or electricity, others still had the ability to heal. Although the abilities were minor and could only really be used for small scale applications like starting boiling a pot of water, the world still fell into a state of minor anarchy for a couple of years before governments managed to implement a crackdown on ability users, as they were now called, and set up a system of registration.
Five years after the awakening it was discovered that younger children had more potent abilities causing a world wide discussion among scientists that discovered the reason, whatever the meteorite had done had caused changes in human genetics and children who were still growing or were born after the awakening had greater changes. This brought greater focus to the younger generation as parents hoped their children would show exceptional abilities; scientists hoped new abilities would be discovered; and governments hoped to snatch up this new generation of talents.
A year later an increase in the number of hospitalized children with unexplained illnesses had been noticed. The scientists once again swarmed competed to discover the cause, throwing around all sorts of theories until one biology lab noticed these children carried the genes for superpowers but they were unable to express them fully. A consensus was eventually reached that it was possible for children to be born with abilities that they could not use due to their bodies not being resilient enough, this relieved many parents as their children would only need to grow up.
Unfortunately the scientists also found a very minor number of children whos abilities would be too powerful for even a fully grown adult, unlike their peers who were simply ill as their body grew into their power and would get better over time, these children would only get worse as their body's began failing. When explained to the children and their parents, the scientists likened it to a balloon in a box. As children grow up their body (box) gets larger and the walls get thicker, at the same time their ability (balloon) gets greater. For normal children this is no problem as the box is always bigger than the balloon; for some children the balloon is pumped up to the limits of the box pushing it to get bigger but the final size of the box is greater than the balloon so there will be no problem; for a very small minority either, the balloon will finish inflating and still be larger than the box at its full size, or, the balloon will keep expanding even after the box stops growing.
This brings us back to the 7 children and 1 just about adult. These eight fell into the minority and they were those in the worse condition, their ability wasn't just a bit too big for their body, it was massively too big. This meant these children would die one day, shortly after they finished puberty as their body stopped growing, this they all knew. The ones at most risk were the recently turned 18 year old boy and the 17 year old girl, though they all spent their time plagued with pain. Knowing they would inevitably die, they signed up to join a clinical trial aimed at finding a solution to the problem, now named ability overload, in the hope that a breakthrough may occur, though they didn't have much hope.
Since they had been admitted to the same room they had quickly bonded over their shared grim circumstances and become friends. Since they lived in the hospital and were mostly confined to their beds they had come up with a shared hobby, using the computer access each had been given they would read stories together mostly Japanese light novels with either superpowers or set in another world, sometimes the oldest children would read the story aloud and they would discuss it as they went along. They liked to imagine themselves taking part of the story as a form of escapism and would wonder, if their ability wasn't so strong, would they be like the protagonists in the stories.
Today they had finished reading the latest light novel released for the story Highschool DxD. Although they agreed that the perverted nature of the protagonist spoiled the story a bit, they really liked the setting; a world very similar to theirs except with supernatural entities hiding in plain sight. Gods of various pantheons lived in their mythological domains; devils, angels and fallen invited humans to join their organizations; and humans could be born with a sacred gear or learn magic, there were no limit to stop humans joining the supernatural, though they did so at their own risk. Humans could even go from being the weakest to one of the strongest, like the perverted protagonist of the story.
***
"Can we play the game please, I've got so many ides." A weak, young voice across the room spoke up.
I tilted my head slightly so I could look at the person who spoke, ignoring the spike of pain as I did. "I don't mind, anyone not want to."
It was my duty as the eldest to take the lead so I asked everyone's opinion. I waited a few seconds for someone to to say anything but was met with silence.
"Ok so are we going with the original story, an alternate universe, or a crossover?" I asked to the room so that we could decide the general setting before we started playing with the specifics.
"I want to do the original story this time." The second eldest girl spoke up.
"Ow but you always want to do that, its so boring we already know the story, even if we add our characters to it, its still boring." The second youngest girl at almost 15 immediately refuted.
"Yeh, I wanna do a crossover, we haven't done one in a while and they're always more complex." The young boy spoke this time.
"But what are you even going to put in it DxD setting is very complete." Another of the girls spoke up this time.
"Ok votes." I called out putting a stop to any arguments among the younger ones before they started. "Whos for original story?"
""Me"" Two votes.
"And crossover?"
""""Me"""" Four votes.
I tilted my head back to look at bead across from me, and met the eyes of the oldest girl in the room who was only half a year younger than me.
"What about you Mira? Or do you want to be story master this time?" I asked the girl named Amira Black.
"I don't mind, let them choose and I'll be a player." She gave a small smile as she replied before turning her eyes back to the younger ones.
Amira and I were the oldest and had been here in the research facility the longest. We acted like a big brother and sister to the others, our roles developed naturally as we welcomed and comforted them when they first joined the clinical trial. Naturally they were all depressed when they first joined as they had recently been told that they would probably not survive to reach their 20s and needed a lot of consoling to at least become relatively stable.
Amira and I had recently been trying to spend even more time playing word games with the others as we had both realized we probably didn't have much time left, all the others were at least a year and a bit younger than Amira so there was still time for some cure or medication to be developed but it would probably be too late for us, the doctors had said we could pass away anytime now.
"Ok then crossover it is, but what do you want to add?" I asked breaking out of my morbid thoughts.
"I want spirits!" The youngest girl piped up quickly. She had been obsessed with spirits ever since we read the Date A Live novels a couple of months ago.
"What sort of spirits?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Date A Live spirits!" As expected. Now I needed to come up with some way to fit them into DxD's story.
This was how the game was played, we would take a story we had been reading and then discuss changes we would make to the story if we decided to go with AU for the game setting or what things we would add from other stories if we were playing crossover. Then we would each take turns creating a character that fit into the story we had crafted, the only exception being we were allowed to add one trait or ability that did not perfectly fit with the world to our character but it could not be so extreme that it breaks the world. For example in a DxD setting we could add a new sacred gear that our character has, it would have abilities that never existed in the original story but abilities that must be semi-realistic according to the magic systems in world.
The rules in this part were a bit vague but thats fine, we were only having fun not actually writing a story that needs super complete world building and power systems. Obviously something that wouldn't fit in DxD, and we would vote out, would be something like Infinity stones from Marvel as they act on universal scale and DxD is confined to a single world and its surrounding realms. Once we had created our characters and fit them into the story we would then describe what our characters would do and the story master would describe how they would react. We had based our game off of dungeons and dragons but instead of creating worlds we just used worlds from stories we had read.
"How do you want to put spirits into DxD?" I asked, returning to my duties as the story master to build the world.
"Ummmm..." She trailed off thinking of how to answer my question.
"We could make them familiars." One of the girls who hadn't joined the conversation yet suggested.
"They're too strong for familiars though. And too unique."
"We could make another place for the spirits to live then."
"What about other stories with spirits?"
"Spirit Chronicles?"
"Oh the one with the pink haired spirit."
"Yeh. I love that one."
"Your just a simp for Rio. You've loved that story ever since we first read it, and anyway it wont fit the story."
"But he's so cool."
"Still wont work thats a whole other world, how are you going to fit it with Earth based stories?"
"Oh but we could …"
And off they went bouncing ideas back and fourth trying to decide how to fit spirits into the story before incorporating other ideas to try and make fit the world. Amira and I only interjected a couple of times to steer the rest away from an argument, as well as tweak a few things so the continuity is maintained, as they decided their changes to the world.
"So to sum it up, its going to be a crossover of Highschool DxD; Date A Live; Spirit Chronicles; Misfit of Demon King Academy; and Testament of Sister New Devil?" I asked bringing the discussion to an end.
"Yes Yes" The boy piped up, clearly in a rush to start building his character.
"Ok ok so the story goes," I started.
"The world was originally the one in Misfit of Demon King Academy created by Militia the creation god; there were 4 races in a great war, gods, demons, spirits and humans (heroes). Anos does his thing splitting the world into 4 to separate each race with the help of Militia, creation god; Kanon, grand hero; and Reno, great spirit. The four separated realms drift apart and the remaining space is where the dimensional gap forms and Ophis is born, during her birth she releases a huge amount of energy, cause she embodies the concept of infinity like Militia does creation, creating the gap from DxD. The gods begin doing some things and start dividing up the god realm and establishing their divine territory, the human realm becomes earth and goes through a lot of evolution, the spirit realm is just floating its own, and the demon realm became the underworld."
"The gods group up, not including the highest level ones like Militia and Abernyu, pick a fight with Ophis trying to claim the gap and get destroyed, though not their divinity which is over time recycled creating 'primordial' gods of each pantheon. The remaining original gods will be called origin gods. When the primordial gods form they rip apart the gods realm each forming their own smaller pantheon realms like Takamagahara and Heaven which they then attach to the human realm which by now has reformed as the planet earth. The gods then begin trying to rip apart the demon realm to form their own underworlds as the demon realm is the opposite of the gods realm. This causes great trouble to the demons there as, although strong, they are under attack by everyone, some of the highest level demons create a deal with the gods splitting off two thirds of their realm, that they weren't using anyway, in exchange for a treaty in which the gods will keep each other in check and leave the demons alone. During all this time the spirit forest has been hidden in the dimensional gap and only beings on the level of Ophis and Militia can locate it."
"A long time passes and we get to ancient human history. The ancient heroes remaining on earth during this time almost gone extinct and began to gather together forming villages preserving what they have left of their history and isolating themselves from the rest of humanity. The gods have set up their systems and begun trying to gain believers, this is around the time Helel falls becoming Lucifer and, together with Lilith, uses some ancient demon DNA as a base to create devils. Dragons have also begun to appear across the four realms as a result of Ophis' existence being known to the gods, this is especially prevalent in the spirit forest as the spirits their are based on mythology, stories and legends. Many deep forests across the human realm now known as Earth form temporary connections with the spirit forest allowing spirits out, including dragons, who eventually incorporate themselves into Earth's ecosystem. At some point during this time Great Red and Trihexa were born when humanities population exploded."
"Later, seven gods, lesser than primordials, that formed from the belief of humans; one dragon king; and 6 great spirits took a continent sized chunk from the earth and created a separate realm in which they sent most of the remaining sorcerers and mages from earth. Now that the world was mostly free form magic the gods started to pull back and begun to try and gather believers indirectly. Magic mostly stayed out of sight as humanity began building civilization, the rare occasion when magic was witnessed were mostly when beings from other realms like the demons, spirits, devils and angels came to watch the progress of humanity. This continues up until the modern time of DxD during which the different pantheons began vying for believers and wars were waged between pantheons with humans as the proxy. This naturally included the great war and other historical events mentioned in DxD."
"During this time the demons stayed mostly isolated within their realm; the spirit forest began connecting to forests across the various realms with one of the strongest connections being to the familiar forest; the hero clans as a faction secluded themselves, though many individuals went out and enacted feats that were recorded in legend or had children that were; the Sorcerers Realm followed the story of spirit chronicles, including the part where an invasion of the realm was attempted by a group of rogue evil gods and their monster minions. The remaining origin gods like Militia had not been seen since the world was split, playing the silent observer."
"Did I miss anything?" I asked the rest of the room, having just finished my not so brief description of the history of our story world.
"The Date A Live spirits." Amira kindly reminded me before the youngest of our group could get on my case about it.
"Of course, the Date A Live spirits were born in the spirit forest Aharthern around the time Christianity spread across the globe as they each embody a branch of the sephirot." That fit quite well within our story world, nice and simple origin story.
"What about the gods from Sister New Devil?" The boy reminded me.
"Just consider them a group of rogue gods who gathered together." I said, too mentally drained to go back and fit them in my explanation. "Oh, I'm considering rogue gods as any who are not part of a pantheon, so that includes the Spirit Chronicles gods, although, they could be considered a pantheon once they become the 6/7 wise gods."
There the world building was finished, now was the best bit. Character design.
"Lets go in age order, call out your new name and your background and your special power." I asked the room.
"Ellena Valac; half-human half-devil, living in the human world with both human mother and devil father; Valac clan trait of Spirit Connect and a sacred gear that allows me to contract spirits and use their abilities."
"Arlen Nonaka; hero, middle child of Nonaka family; perfect sword affinity."
"Just that?" I asked, without looking up from my notes.
"Yeh Heroes with swords are just the coolest." I just shrugged my shoulders in acceptance before looking up at the 3rd youngest of our group.
"Um, um, can I be Miharu Ayase?"
"I don't see why not but you wont really be able to interact with the rest of us if you go for the reincarnation, and you wont be able to play Miharu's part in the story if you don't?"
"Its ok, its ok. Ill just steer the story to going back to Earth through the spirit forest, I presume one of the connections you mentioned would be in the forest the spirit village resides in?" She asked in a clearly hopeful tone, we all new she had a crush on the character Rio in her mind, but, besides the eight of us here and the occasional middle aged scientist, we didn't know anyone else and we treated each other mostly like siblings. I personally don't understand the appeal of a character like that who is too consumed by revenge to properly take care of the pseudo harem forming around him, but then again, I'm a man; but I do have to admit as a protagonist, he has cool moments.
"Ok then, Ill be Miharu Ayase with her background and for my power I want Lina's precognition abilities early. Thats fine right, since Miharu is the reincarnation of the Wise God Lina's spirit?"
"Yeh thats fine I suppose." I didn't really mind but I wasn't too sure how we would work a power like precognition into a game like this. Maybe give her an extra dice role to change a decision after its made to represent the chance her precognition saw the event.
"I want to be a Phenex, Roxanne Phenex twin sister to Riser Phenex, naturally with my clan trait but I want it mutated to be like a black phoenix thats more aligned with death than life."
"Ill be a half-human half-fallen with the name Madeline Collier, daughter of Azazel and a prostitute from England that he finds after 3 years searching for sacred gear wielders. Born with the Longinus sacred gear Innovate Clear and angel powers naturally and my special ability I want my balance break to allow me to bring one thing from Innovate Clear's dimension into the real world in exchange for energy or life force if its a living being."
"Ill be Artoria Pendragon, Human from the Pendragon family main branch, born a year before Arthur and I'll be born with a connection to Excalibur from Fate which in this world will be a spirit sword from Aharthern based on Excalibur's legend."
"Ok I've got all that, what about you Mira?" I lifted my head to look at Amira, resting in the bed opposite me.
"Ill be a Devil-Demon hybrid, with the name Amira Leviathan Boran. Descendant of the original Satan Leviathan and one of the 7 demon elders created by Anos, Melheis Boran. Naturally with the clan traits of Leviathan and the Boran lineage's immense demonic power and shapeshifting. For my special ability I want a sixth sense that subtly guides me towards things I want."
"Ok, does anyone else want to add anything?" I ask, getting ready to begin the game.
"You do one as well." The youngest spoke up once more. Although I don't need a character as I am the story master, I'll make one that can easily be killed off just to appease her.
"Alright, I'll be an artificial devil made by Rizevim with a base of Astaroth and Sitri from Ajuka and Serafall mixed with lots of other clans as well as demon, dragon and angel DNA in an attempt to make a super devil with multiple clan traits. And as my special ability I want the Astaroth clan trait that enhances intelligence to mutate into an artificial intelligence, basically I want Raphael, Lord of Wisdom from That Time I Reincarnated as a Slime. This will also keep my character alive as Rizevim adds more DNA." A solid character that could be fun to play like a master mage with Raphael's intelligence creating new skills or a manipulator with its ability to collect information. I can also very easily kill off my character in Rizevim's experiments if playing and controlling the story become too much.
"Your name?"
"Lets go with Cain, like the first murderer from the bible. Perfect name for a devil Rizevim creates to be a weapon. Alright, its time for bed." I said shocking the younger ones who wanted to play immediately with my quick change in topic.
"But we just finished the game settings." A cute pout but now's not the time.
"Look the time, its almost 9 O'clock. Bed time, we can start playing immediately after tomorrow mornings blood tests."
""Humph.""
I smiled at them as I helped them get ready for bed along with Amira, its our duty as the eldest after all.
Finally after everyone is settled and the lights are out, I let the smile I had been holding fade away replaced by a look that could be described as bored or indifferent. I try really hard to be cheerful but it can only ever be fake when you know your own death is approaching. I've been here for seven years now and all my life has amounted to was being a test subject. I closed my eyes and tried to cleanse my mind of these dark thoughts by thinking of tomorrow as my consciousness faded.