The Prince

Kallaway here. It's been quite a while.

I was in Daniel's base, going over some footage with Kimiko, when a door appeared on the wall beside me, out of fucking no where. Daniel suddenly came bursting out of it, slamming it shut behind him, nd collapsed into a sitting position, panting, as the door faded away.

"You are not taking me to that city again, HELLFIRE!" he growled.

"Daijiyoubudesuka?" Kimiko asked.

"Not in the mood for nihongo right now," Daniel said, picking himself back up.

"Your work with the SMSC going well?" I asked.

In response, he presented 3 glass vials, each containing something different. One had a was of crumpled up thread, another had some golden hair, and the last one had some rubble.

"You could say that," he said.

"So are you about ready to test out the new Extractor now?" I asked.

He nodded, and carried himself over to the now seemingly complete machine. It was certainly a step up from the old one. Instead of repurposing a toaster oven like the last model, he had built this new one from the ground up, and it looked way more streamlines. Not only that, he had taken his idea to connect it to a laptop a step further, and had actually built a laptop into the machine, on top of the Extraction chamber. The Cell charging port had been moved to the side of the machine, rather than the top.

He placed the vial of thread into the chamber, closing it and opening the laptop. He began imputing some codes, and the energy was slowly extracted and amplified. He plugged a Cell into the port, and input some more code, channeling the energy from the chamber into the Cell. It worked perfectly. No problems, no errors, no cracked glass. He had actually pulled it off.

"Working well so far," Daniel said, retrieving his new Vambrace from a desk drawer. "Now, to see what I can do with this."

He equipped the Vambrace, and used it to absorb some of the energy. He then gave his new power a test, and a long thread burst forth from each of his fingers, drawing blood as they did so.

"Ow! Fuck!" Daniel exclaimed.

He pulled himself together, and examined the threads. He sent them out, wrapping around some bit of scrap metal he had lying around, and lifting them into the air. He pulled them closer to himself, and let them fall to the ground before drawing the threads back in.

"Useful," he said. "But painful..."

He repeated the entire process with the vial full of hair. After absorbing the energy, he turned and addressed Kimiko.

"Mind grabbing me a beer?" he asked.

I immediately noticed something off about his request, but I couldn't quite place it.

"Okay!" Kimiko said, walking off to the mini fridge.

"And Kallaway," he said. "Do you mind picking some of his scrap up for me?"

I began reaching down to pick up some of the metal, but quickly stopped myself as I realized what was happening.

"You voice...," I said. "You hypnotizing us with it."

"Excellent!" he said, delightedly. "We've established that the Unnamed Child's charm doesn't work on everyone."

Kimiko returned to us, carrying a beer in her hand.

"Did I miss anything?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Apparently Daniel can use his voice to compel people to do what he wants."

"Yeah," Daniel confirmed. "But it seems that people who realize I'm doing it, and/or have a strong will, can resist it. I'll have to test it further."

"You're a dick," I informed him.

"You've known that since we first met," he said. "Now, one last power to extract."

He repeated the Extraction process one last time with the vial of rubble, than used to Vambrace to absorb it.

"So what can this power do?" I asked.

"Oh, I already have a good idea," he said. "My grandfather notably used this power quite a bit."

"So was it his version of your finger bang?" I asked.

"Don't. Diss. My finger bang." Daniel warned.

He proceeded to use the power to levitate several bits of the scrap metal, which then began glowing.

"Okay, managing this so far," he muttered.

It was clear that he was focusing very hard on what he was doing, so I chose to remain quiet while he concentrated.

He then smashed all of the scrap he was levitating together, and slowly merged them all into one solid chunk. He slowly began reshaping it, until it eventually took the shape of an extremely large sword, far bigger than mine. It stopped glowing, and he produced a small bottle of Gorilla glue from his pocket, along with a length of clothe, which I recognized as the same cloth HELLFIRE had covered his eyes with when possessing Daniel during the incident with Tyler. He used the glue to secure one end of the cloth to the base of the swords hilt, then wrapped the cloth around the hilt, using the sword to secure the other end of the cloth to the end of the hilt, creating a make-shift grip.

"Perfect," Daniel said. "Now, can I have a look at the Proto-Godslayer for a second?"

I raised an eyebrow, and slowly drew my sword from its sheath. It immediately began glowing.

"Is this because of you, HELLFIRE?" I asked.

Daniel's eyes suddenly changed, becoming yellow, with slit pupils.

"Yeah, I am a Fear," HELLFIRE said. "Of course I'm gonna set that thing off. Now let me get a look at it."

"Now why would I do that?" I asked.

Daniel's eyes returned to normal.

"Just go with it," he said. "I can restrain HELLFIRE if he tries to do something disagreeable."

I handed the sword over, but kept my guard up. Daniel's eyes went all weird again, as he examined the runes etched onto both sides of the blade, before returning to normal. He then handed me back the sword and turned his attention back to the blade he had made himself.

"You got them, HELLFIRE?" he asked. "Okay, good. Do your thing."

HELLFIRE took over again, doing his weird eye thing, and used his flames to engrave identical symbols into the new sword, that began glowing once he had finished. HELLFIRE then gave control back to Daniel.

"Excellent," he said.

"So what's this all about?" I asked.

"I have a feeling that the Proto-Godslayer is going to play a big role in the battle against the forest," Daniel said.

Daniel glanced at his new Extractor.

"And I recently learned that having a backup on hand can prove useful," he added.

"I see," I said. "But I think that blade might be a bit too big for you to wield."

"I didn't make it for me," he said, before vanishing briefly and returning without it.

"What did you just do?" I asked.

"Stashed it away somewhere safe," he said. "Just in case."

"I see," I said. "So what exactly is that new power of yours? Control over metal? Some form of geokinesis?"

"On the surface, yes," Daniel said. "But there's a lot more to it. But I'll need to practice a lot more to figure out how to use it to its full potential."

He gestured to Kimiko, who handed him the beer she'd gotten for him.

"So?" he asked, cracking it open. "Any news on Tyler?"

"Quite a bit, actually," I said. "Let me show you."

I lead him over to the computed that Kimiko and I were reviewing footage on.

"Tony sent us some of this, and the rest has been circulating online," I told him. "Have a look."

Daniel looked over some of the footage himself. It wasn't just footage, but a few tweets and Facebook posts talking about sighting of the man with the tree arm. Daniel red through all of the posts, and looked over some of the footage.

"Where and when did these sightings take place?" he asked.

"That's what we've been going over," I said. "One post mentions a sighting of him on the outskirts of New York City at noon, and then he's seen two hours later in West Texas. He somehow closed that distance in less than a couple hours. Meaning-"

"He can access the Bleeding Tree's domain," Daniel finished.

"It's the same with most of the other posts and videos," I said. "Him showing up in distant places rapidly."

"That'll make it significantly harder to track him down," Daniel said. "I might be able to figure out some sort of patterned if I look over this for long enough, but there's no guarantee..."

Kimiko took the mouse from him and opened up a video.

"This is some pretty worrying footage we've found of him," I said.

"It was recorded in Osaka," Kimiko said.

"I hear the okonomiyaki is pretty good there," Daniel said.

"What?" I asked.

"Cabbage pancakes," Daniel clarified. "I read about them in a manga in middle school. I've wanted to try them ever since."

"Look, just watch the video," I said.

Daniel hit the play button, and we were presented with some cell phone footage of Tyler standing on top of a building, facing out to the horizon. People were conversing loudly around whoever was recording, but Tyler didn't pay them any attention, instead focusing on something in the distance. The camera panned to show that one of the forest's seeds was flying rapidly towards the city. As it drew closer, Tyler braced himself, and then extended his wooden arm rapidly, catching the seed before it could make contact with the ground.

"He caught it...," Daniel said, surprised.

"Keep watching," I told him.

More vines and branches extended from Tyler's arm, encasing the giant seed entirely. The seed emitted a bright green light, that slowly faded as Tyler's arm shrunk around it. Tyler's arm soon returned to its original size and shape, and no sign of the seed was left over. He then turned his attention to the gathered crowd, and lunched several large thorns at them, causing them to scatter and flee. The footage cut out after that.

"He... he absorbed the seed...," Daniel said, perplexed.

"Message boards in Japan have given him a title after this footage got out," Kimiko said. "They call him Ibara no oji."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Roughly translated," Daniel said. "It means 'Thorned Prince'."

He lowered his head, lost in thought.

"I'd like you two to leave," he said after a while. "I'd like to look this over on my own."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "WE might be able to-"

"No," he said. "He was my int- my friend. I need to find a way to help him. I just... need to be alone for a while."

After a bit of debate, Kimiko and I left. I hope he does manage to figure out how to find Tyler.

But I considered Tyler a friend too. If either of us does track him down, I'm not letting Daniel go alone. I want to help him too. I know he can still be saved.