Paradox Saga: Rising Sun

My Third Godfather Shows Up

Do Figures really have to look better than me?

Looking at my third godfather felt nostalgic and annoying on the same time. Well, he would be familiar to me as I’ve seen him first for a nick of a second back at Sadao-san’s Memory Talisman. He now looked different from how he looked last time. Back then, his hair was shabby, his face clean, his body leaner than mine and had some big wobbly goggles on his forehead. Now, he looked much mature. His red-orange hair was shabby – the gorgeous kind-of-forgot-to-comb shabby and not the hairs-pointing-in-all-directions kind of hair. His beard above the lips was starting to protrude out the skin like it was shaven a week ago. His whole body was now muscular and looked a little brown with burns and scars filling his arms – either he was fighting a fire-breathing dragon or he fell in a massive volcano’s boiling pit of magma (or he could’ve done both). There were still goggles on his forehead, but with his muscular body, it looked no bigger than a headband.

“You’re my godfather?” I asked, though I sounded dumb just by repeating what he said.

“Yes. I thought that someone was attacking this house,” he said and sat down the couch. “My alarms were ringing endlessly when I got back home after an Anaphor Clearing. Turns out they were messing with my enchantments.”

The girls went to my direction and saw my godfather.

“Kuya Appius! You’re here!” Midorima said and hugged him.

“You know him, Midorima?” I asked her.

Midorima looked at me. “Yeah, he’s my sister’s husband. Sorry for the late information,” she said.

Great, I thought. Another secret just got revealed.

“So, what brings you here, Mr. Appius?” Saiko asked.

“As what I said earlier, my alarms were ringing endlessly because of my stuff getting moved here,” he said and got something out of his pockets. It was a complex-looking alarm clock with two glowing crystals on each side shaped like a cup. “Besides, I have the right to see my godchild, don’t I?”

Nami handed him a glass of juice. “Thank you, Nami. So…” he looked at me, “how’s my godchild doing?”

“I’m fine, though I could say that I don’t recognize you except for the lean and shabby-haired man that I saw on Sadao-san’s Memory Talisman,” I replied. “In fact, I don’t remember you being my godfather.”

He frowned. “I thought you’d remember me when you’d see me. Well, can’t blame you, though,” he said and got a gulp from his glass of juice. “My body greatly changed when I started facing the furnace. You’d get a body like this if you work hard, Alonio, especially if you are a Craftsman.”

“Furnace?” I asked. “Like the weapon-making oven?”

“You’re not exactly right or wrong, but yes, we use furnaces for weapon-making,” he replied in a you-should-try-to-see-me-in-an-actual-furnace tone. “Furnaces, or forges, as we call it, are oven-like structures where Craftsmen spend most of their time in making weapons and tools.”

“Wait…” I interrupted. I remembered what Saiko said earlier, about our security system made by one of my Dad’s friends and the Heptagon’s Beta-Tier Craftsman. “You’re that Craftsman?”

He put the now empty glass on the table in front of him and straightened his goggles. “Yes, Shiro. I’m that Craftsman. Appius Blaze, Heptagon’s one and only Craftsman at your service,” he said proudly. “Majority of the security charms here are my own inventions – that Temporary Dismemberment Basalt, for example,” he said and pointed at the large stone that was being hauled by the workers.

So that’s the reason why the man from a while ago had his hand removed, I pondered.

Appius got something out of his Inventory – the black vortex stuff that I still haven’t figured out – and placed it on the floor. It was a simple gold cube, at first, and I thought he would blow the whole house with a square-shaped bomb (hey, don’t blame me, even my teacher tried to eat me for lunch) before the golden-colored cube started to shake. It stayed on the floor shaking for three seconds before it slowly deformed like clay and transformed into a mettaloid steampunk-style beetle smaller than your hand, luckily.

“Deiectionem Leporem,” he chanted in Latin.

Charm Purging, my mind translated subconsciously for no apparent reason.

My godfather seemed to be talking with the beetle as it quickly skittered to the giant stone’s direction, crawling under us and jumping sideways gymnast-style before going out the door. Don’t ask me how it did that, I am empty of ideas.

“Figures nowadays don’t really have keen senses. I put some charms on that stone so no one can get it easily,” he said as the beetle crawled up the stone. The workers stopped and looked at it.

The small robot’s eyes glowed and skittered around the stone as if searching for something. It stopped on the top corner of the massive rock like it found an expensive dot of gold on the spot.

“And here comes the light show…” my godfather said.

I would’ve asked him what he meant with the “light show” but the beetle’s eyes suddenly flashed in a violent way. The workers must’ve sensed something since they kept their distance as far as they could get from the stone. The little holed tubes on the beetle’s back exhausted some smoke. After a few clicks and whirring sounds, the tiny robot pointed its glowing eyes on the stone – the light slowly going through the stone’s surface like a laser. It would’ve been the light show Appius was thinking of, but it wasn’t. Some signs flashed outside the spot that the beetle was penetrating. They were unrecognizable, at first glance, as they were glimmering like broken light bulbs. However, they started to arrange into a line and spiraled their way above the stone.

Halt, Suspend, Conquer, Anti-Burglar, my mind started to translate again.

“Those are Latin, right?” I asked Appius. “Stabit, Prohibire, Pro Ruptor,” I started to read the Latin words flying out from where the beetle was pointing.

“Quite impressive, Shiro,” Appius remarked.

“How did I do that?” I said, confused myself.

“Well, you’d know that, Shiro,” my godfather said. “It’s a natural aspect in your bloodline. You had a Roman ancestor, though we still don’t know who it is. Of course, you’d understand Latin as you have a freckle of your Roman ancestor’s essence that I obtained through my Labor.”

I remembered what this “Labor” stuff is – the mission that the Heptagon did to obtain pure essences from each of my ancestors. Of course, I appreciate what they did, though I’m a bit disappointed to the fact that they cannot reveal what Labor they executed. It would’ve been a great thing to reward them or at least compensate them for what they did to me. I remembered reading one of Heracles’ Labors, his fifth actually. His fifth Labor was to clean the Augean stables which reeked of cattle and horse “mess”. I hope one of the Heptagon members didn’t have to clean someone’s filthy stable just to acquire one of my ancestor’s pure essence.

The Latin glowing inscriptions continued to glow upward until something caught my eye.

“Ephemeral Decapitation?” I translated, my mind trying to wrap the idea of cutting your head for some time then gluing it back to its place. “It couldn’t be possible, right?”

Appius raised a brow. “What do you mean? Oh…” he pointed innocently outside. “You mean that?”

I looked outside and saw one of the most impossible things that could happen in this world.