Disclaimer: I own nothing, this is purely a fanfic for enjoyment.
Cross-over from various games, books, anime, manga, and movies.
The familiar characters you see here belong to their respected authors and owners.
"Speech"
Arc 7: The Journey - Chapter 1
"Yui." I call in the dullest voice I can muster, each syllable dropping like dead weight.
"Yes, Jin?" Yui replies, her tone unnaturally cheerful, almost too sweet, as though she's trying to mask something behind it.
"Where are we? And why are we no longer in the previous world I was in?" My voice is flat, but my gaze drifts slowly around me, every detail clawing at my senses in ways I wish it wouldn't.
The world of Danny Phantom is gone. In its place, I now stand in a long, narrow hallway, one that seems more suggested than built, as if reality couldn't quite decide whether to commit to its existence. The fluorescent lights overhead buzz faintly, bleeding into one another until their edges dissolve into shimmering halos. The air itself feels heavy, swollen with static, and the scent of antiseptic mingles with something sour, almost metallic.
By the signs and the attire of a few people drifting past, white coats, pale scrubs, eyes glazed with exhaustion—it's clear we're in a hospital. Yet… none of them see us. Or rather, they choose not to. Their gazes slide away, skimming over me, Yui, and Blake as if we're shadows stitched into the corner of their vision.
"A mental hospital." Yui says simply, as if commenting on the weather. Her tone is unnervingly casual. "As for why… because I decided that world was unsuited to be your first one to devour."
"I see… So this world is unclaimed, or what?" I ask Yui calmly, shifting my grip on Blake as I continue holding her limp form in my arms. Her breathing is steady, soft. "Also, did you have to choose here of all places when entering this world?"
"Yup. As for choosing this place. Well, actually." Yui replies, tilting her head with that infuriatingly playful smile. "I just chose a random spot in this world that would match you, Jin. So, if anything, you were the one who wanted to come here, not me."
She punctuates her words by poking my cheek, the sensation oddly sharp, like static dancing under my skin. Her presence, so vibrant and impossibly real, feels painfully out of place against the cold sterility of the hospital around us.
"Anyway." She continues, leaning closer until her breath brushes against my lips, "I've got to go. Jobs and all that stupid stuff. Later!"
Without waiting for a response, she kissed me on the lips and then vanished—no flare of light. No sound. One moment, Yui is there, the next, she's erased from existence like wet paint wiped from glass.
The hallway seems emptier without her, as though reality exhales in her absence. A moment later, Blake stirs in my arms. Her eyes snap open, calm and unclouded, as if she hadn't been unconscious at all. She slips from my hold with practiced ease, standing on her own as though nothing had happened.
"Great…" I mutter dully, my voice swallowed by the sterile hum of the corridor. I glance around, watching the passing doctors, nurses, and patients—all of them still ignoring Blake and me as though we don't exist. Not even a stray glance, not a flicker of acknowledgment. It's not indifference; it's closer to blindness.
I start wandering, my footsteps echoing faintly against the too-white tiles. As I move, I begin spreading out the range of the River of Time, letting its unseen currents ripple through the layers of this place, seeking fragments of information about the world we've been dropped into. The sensation is immediate and overwhelming—threads unraveling, possibilities tugging at the edges of my awareness, faint whispers of pasts that may not belong to this reality.
The irony isn't lost on me. In the beginning, before all of this—before the job as a caretaker, before I became an actual member of the Eldritch pantheon, there was a time I'd almost willingly placed myself into a mental hospital. The only reason I didn't was that I couldn't afford it. And now, here I am, standing in one anyway.
It brings… mixed feelings.
"Alright, new plan." I say to Blake without turning my head. I don't need to; the River of Time gives me perfect clarity. I see her slight nod without ever looking, her motion caught within the flowing reflections of countless probabilities. "Since Yui sent us to this world for me to devour, I need to figure out how to actually do that. But first, we need to know what kind of world we've landed in before anything else."
Blake stays silent beside me, her calm presence unsettling in a way I can't quite name. She knows full well I'm not truly talking to her.
…Or at least, I hope she knows.
Calmly, I continue wandering through the mental hospital's narrow, sterile hallways, though the longer I walk, the more my confusion deepens. The River of Time flows around me in shifting currents, but its whispers are fragmented—incomplete, contradictory, almost as though this world itself can't decide what's real. It's giving me nothing concrete. Nothing useful.
…Well, nothing except for glimpses of interesting things happening nearby. None of which makes sense.
I pause mid-step, blinking as I sense something faintly wrong ahead. My feet move on instinct, pulling me toward an unmarked door where the River of Time thrashes violently, its surface distorting like cracked glass—an operating room.
In a mental hospital.
Which is already a contradiction.
Either this isn't a mental hospital at all… or something far worse is happening here.
I slam my hand against the sliding door, forcing it open with a sharp crack as it splinters under the pressure. My body moves faster than thought, and then I'm staring into the room—a moment I may or may not come to regret.
A girl stands strapped upright to a vertical metal table. Her body is thin, her skin pale, almost sickly under the harsh fluorescent light. She has short, dark green hair cascading down to her waist, framing a sharp, delicate face with matching green eyes that lock on mine the instant I enter.
She wears a white blouse, partially torn at the collar, and over it a dark olive-green military-style jacket with matching pants, cut in a style with a faint western aesthetic. A belt hangs around her waist, the empty holsters telling me she was armed, once. Now, her weapons are missing.
Her blouse has been ripped open down the front, exposing her bare chest without restraint, as though whoever left her here didn't care for dignity, modesty, or humanity. And yet, she doesn't move to cover herself. She doesn't flinch. She doesn't react at all. Although she can't really cover herself since her arms and legs are strapped to the table, preventing her from moving.
There's no one else in the room. No doctors. No attendants. No one.
Just her.
And she is awake.
Her blank expression fixes on me, unblinking, as though my sudden intrusion means nothing to her. There's no embarrassment, no fear, no anger. Nothing. Her emptiness unsettles me more than if she had screamed.
The corner of my mouth twitches involuntarily as the River of Time violently surges, slamming fragments of memories into me—pasts I haven't yet done. Faces, voices, screams, gunfire. Glimpses of this girl's name. Her history. Her choices. Her sins.
And beneath it all… I begin to understand where we are.
And I don't like it.
"Blake. Go unstrap her."
My maid obeys immediately, moving without hesitation toward the restrained girl. Her steps are quiet, precise, deliberate, not a wasted movement.
Honestly, this isn't what I expected when Yui dropped us into this world. A part of me thought I'd find myself in another ridiculous mess, something akin to the Hentai version of RWBY. But instead…
It's worse.
I now have to deal with what's essentially a Hentai version of Kino's Journey.
The girl in front of me, Kino, shouldn't even be defined by gender. In her original story, the fanbase treated her as practically genderless, an androgynous traveler who wandered from one strange land to the next.
But this world… changed her.
Here, after years of wandering, she accepted herself as female when she turned 21. That's her current age. And this version of her life, this twisted divergence, reeks of the kind of nonsense that makes me want to burn this entire place to the ground.
Because, of course, I would stumble upon her now.
Right now.
Just as she was moments away from being raped, experimented on, and whatever other idiotic plot contrivances this hentai-riddled nightmare of a world decided to throw at her.
The only reason Kino is still untouched, the only reason her breasts are bare and yet unmarked, is because the "plot" of this world is literally protecting her until she meets her so-called "destiny." Whether that destiny is freedom, a blood-soaked rebellion, or dying on her own terms…
That, apparently, is up to me.
The River of Time hums violently at the edges of my awareness, confirming fragments of what's to come, timelines collapsing and reforming around this girl, each possibility soaked in consequence of the past events that I could have done, but nothing happens in the present. Yet.
This world feels rigged. And I don't like games I didn't choose to play.
I hear footsteps rushing in from the hallways—fast, sharp, uneven. Whoever's coming isn't here for routine work.
Which means whatever Yui did to make the natives ignore Blake and me… It's unraveling—the moment I found Kino, the protection shattered.
Still, I count myself lucky. Yui didn't say anything about me needing to sleep with Kino, which, in this hentai version world, I half-expected her to. Nor did she explicitly say Kino's supposed to become a member of the Eldritch pantheon.
But even without confirmation, the River of Time stirs violently, and I already have a big clue on how this ties to devouring the world with the Heart of Eldritch.
…Maybe.
I let out a slow breath and reach into my mindscape, pulling out the Newtonian Apple. Its presence bleeds weight into the air, and reality bends faintly around it, as though the concept of "up" and "down" briefly forgot where it belonged.
Without hesitation, I take a bite.
The taste is indescribable, sweetness collapsing into bitterness, layered with something metallic and faintly electric, like biting into the core of a star. Power floods me instantly, and the laws of nature warp beneath my fingertips.
I raise my hand lazily, fingers curling slightly.
Gravity spikes.
A sudden, crushing force blooms outward, and the footsteps stop almost instantly. There's no scream. No warning. No time for them to react. The people in the hallways, nurses, guards, whoever they were, implode under their own weight, bodies folding inward, bones shattering, organs rupturing. A wet, muffled series of cracks echoes through the corridor before it's replaced by silence.
When the silence finally settles, it's broken only by the faint dripping of blood from the ceiling and walls.
A messy solution, maybe. But effective.
"Lord Heart, the task is complete." Blake reports. She now stands next to Kino, who quietly tries to fix her torn blouse with steady hands. Her movements are methodical, but after a few seconds, she gives up with a soft sigh and instead buttons up her military jacket, concealing what remains of the damage.
I blink slowly, studying her more carefully now.
Her canon counterpart, the one I remember, was younger, still in her teens, her appearance deliberately androgynous. But this version… this Kino carries herself differently. There's a maturity in her expression, a quiet weight in the way she moves, and her body is far more feminine than it should be. Years of wandering, of fighting, of enduring, all of it shaped her into someone who no longer needs to question who she is.
"Right…" I murmur, turning away from the ruined operating room. "Let's leave." I glance at Kino, meeting her steady gaze. "You can come along with us if you wish."
For a moment, she just looks at me. Silent, unreadable, as though measuring my intent. Then she gives a small nod.