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???, Data Dungeon World

Much had changed in the Data Dungeon World since the fall of the Black Messenger, its Black King not so very long ago; in the month that passed the dungeon had collapsed upon itself and all of its impeccable glory had been reduced to a pile of glittering rubble. Its life was spent, its walls collapsed and the throne upon which Hetero the Despondent One had sat remained vacant even with his followers coming back from time-to-time to wait for his return in the interim. Here lay a ruined, decadent reminder of just how far a person could fall down the rabbit hole of these powers that they had obtained; when you gave yourself over so wholly to one unholy idea such as the one which had been his obsession...the prevention of Nyx's arrival and the utter suppression of Inaba to the will of Hetero...you would be always destined to fail. In the hearts of those who care, there was always a new plan, a new desperation forcing a greater and even more volatile power out of their bodies, through their veins, and in the last moment of utter despair forced upon him, Soji Seta had awakened to a power that was even greater than that of the master of the dungeon. And he had fallen, taking with him the purpose of the messengers and the heart of this place. Now his aimless, wandering followers padded down the halls in search of a fool's hope that one day their master might return from beyond defeat, that the walls of the Data Dungeon World might rebuild themselves and shine with a perfected power even greater than all the time it had stood before. They hoped in vain that the seat of the Data Dungeon World would one day be filled again by a worthy leader, the one who had given them their power and freed them from their fears that had choked the very life out of them.

How surprised they must have been when they returned to the dungeon after a short spell and found that the walls had indeed been repaired. Bright they were, unusually so...more powerful and ominous than ever they had been in the days of Hetero the Despondent One. As they walked down the paths it was apparent that not even a single speck of rubble remained uncleaned, not a single wall still in decay from the time that it had spent untended by its forgotten master. And more importantly than any of those little signs...as they walked, not a single shadow crept into view. Not a small Maya shadow creeping past with its unnatural arm and blue mask atop its head, not a single Knight riding to block their path or welcome them with a tip of its spear. Always in this place there had been shadows present, if only in an ominous feeling on the far side of one of the dungeon's walls...like a trap waiting to be sprung at the will of the man who controlled the dungeon itself. Now, they walked unhindered, and the only air of malice that filled the dungeon came not from the walls or the floors or anywhere that stood before them until they had once again reached the throne of the Black Messenger...and inside that room came a malice far stronger, far greater than all the shadows in the dungeons before this combined. As if all that wayward hate had been pulled together and lumped into one great organism, it was emanating ill vibes from the very throne of Hetero himself! But when they entered they did not find the orange-haired, green-eyed, white-coated Hetero that they remembered sitting upon their throne.

What sat there was a black mass of writhing shadows still pulling themselves ever-tighter into the form of a human...and in patches one could begin to see where his new shape was forming. Pale skin upon a hand resting upon his knee, Long, black pants feeling slightly more akin to fabric than shadow at the sight. But he was wretched, inhuman, still forming and solidifying like a gelatin in the cold. This was how the face of the trespasser upon their Lord's throne appeared to them, and it was enough to send the laughing octopus even further off his rocker than ever before. Quite a feat, if I may say so myself. Forward launched the deformed warrior with all his feral glory, black blood caking his armor and a wild look in his eyes beneath the shattered visor upon his face. He reached out and screeched, but the mass of shadows did not move straight away...only when his attacker came within range of the puddle of black shadows still pulling themselves up from the base of his throne into his feet did he seem to notice the lightning-swift approach of the wild warrior. It was then that his pale-skinned arm seemed to leap to life of its own accord, shadows forming into a bundle of large, black snakes which hissed awfully as they coiled and struck out, stretching away from the 'shoulder' of the twisted thing so fast that they seemed to bite into the stomach of their target before he could finish swinging his claws at him...and then exploded out from the back side of the stomach of Yoshizo Yoshimura in a monstrous torrent that flung him back several meters across the floor and held him aloft, the mass of serpent-like shadows still wriggling and hissing, kept in the air by some unknown power inside of the still-seated mass...and even as they hung the pierced body of the Toad Killer high above the air like a black crucifixion. Shifting the body once upon the snakes, it lolled the rag-doll killer's head forward just long enough that his failing eyes could see down the long length of now-sickly green-scaled snakes towards the black mass to which they were connected...and the last thing he could see was the golden, slitted eye of the mass open from beneath a liquid-black eyelid.

"What's the matter, Yoshizo," the voice was sharp and soft at the same time, a higher pitch than Hetero's...more feminine and cunning all at the same time...but any care inside of it was mocking at best, malice the applicable venom which dripped away from every word, "Don't you recognize me?" Suddenly, there it was...that same intensity, that same hate inside of the eye that Yoshizo knew so well...it was the same hate and ambition that he had always served, that he had obsessively sworn to follow. This was...different...but undeniably, this mass, whatever it was, was also his master! And this realization was the last thing that would pass through his mind before his body was unceremoniously dumped to the floor of the dungeon and the serpents retracted into a now fully-formed arm upon the throne's new and yet familiar occupant. His eye shifted hen to his other follower where he stood across the way and a fair distance before them. His black-forming lips curled into an evil smirk. "Don't tell me you've forgotten me too, my Black Blade? You and I still have so much work to do together," beneath is breath was a low hum, almost like a sinister laugh, but the still-forming vocal chords made it difficult to tell exactly what sort of sound it was making. Upon the floor now Yoshizo twitched and bled out, undoubtedly on the way towards dying if he were not to be tended soon. Suddenly, a long, pink tongue...longer than any human tongue, darted out and licked away a thick black ooze from the figures lips and that smirk revealed a mouth full of pearly white teeth and a pair of sharp fangs that hungered for something...maybe blood.

"Hmm...but for now, I suppose you should tend to your little...friend?" he chuckled darkly, a rumbling sound and a look that knew just how much the swordsman-cyborg hated that word, "take him to your Forge and rebuild him. Then come back to me...and we can pick up right where we left off." His face was slowly melting away from black to pale white...his eyes glinting with malice as more of his body grew solid by the second. And even though the sound was muffled by the fluidity of his neck and lungs at the moment, there was a sound unmistakeable that filled the Data Dungeon World's Throne Room with a sound that set it blazing to light and thriving with a newfound life that hadn't even been there in the strongest of their former master's days before this rebirth.

It was laughter, the thick and evil sound of victory.