Damon's Ascension

The Vanguard Team were silent. They had seen the various 'origin stories' of each other, which led to how they likely awakened their specific abilities, something that not only Damon noticed, but the entire crew.

To say that everyone was curious to know how Xela, Felicia and Damon awakened Ex grade abilities and what they went through to get it, it would be a lie.

However, Felicia and Xela had already cleared their requirements to leave and clearly were not enthusiastic about taking a risk to jump into this bet while also definitely lacking enthusiasm to have their background dug out.

So they tacitly did not make any move to step up to the plate and the team tacitly did not question them. At least, the good news was that Damon was going to take part, as their previous misconception that he was also done was cleared, so they were finally going to find out how the Human Race Prime Representative 'originated'.

None of them actually expected a typical revenge romance plot, being humiliated for being uncool, bettering himself 'offscreen' for a few years and the coming back being the hotcake in the area, all previous naysayers now kneeling for forgiveness.

Were they watching some Chinese romance drama short film that were popular nowadays?

So he awoke Probability Manipulation, Devour and Avatar from being rejected in public as a teen?!

Almost 90% of young men considered to be around 6/10 nd below on the attractiveness scale had gone through that at some point in their lives! Are you saying that when Awakening Agent manufacturing increased and was distributed on Earth, millions of EX ability holding monsters would be jumping about?

But wait, he what?

The team were even more puzzled when Damon accepted her proposal and walked away in the scene recreation. Their confused eyes became deeper until Damon spoke and explained, then they began to understand, their expression going from puzzlement to surprise then to shocked silence.

Henry tapped Kyle on the back lightly. "Brother, it can't be what I'm thinking, right?"

Kyle's expression was grim. "Unfortunately, it is."

Henry's voice came again through the mental link, in a quiet way that Damon wouldn't be able to 'hear'. "So… all that about value… about necessity… that wasn't just philosophy, was it?"

Levi didn't respond with words, only a mental sigh of affirmation.

Marshal's presence flickered once across the link in a distant way, but not necessarily absent. "He never desired justice, only certainty."

Nicholas adjusted his cuffs mentally, so to speak, his tone dry but sharp. "Justice is for the wronged and Damon was never fatally wronged. He simply lost… and refused to stay the loser."

Connor exhaled slowly, not out loud but through the link, a mental exhale of brutal understanding. "And then he started winning… and realized that pain was currency. He's been investing ever since."

Protizen, normally stoic and loyal, hesitated for the first time, and not in distrust, but in slow comprehension. "Is this… what makes a leader? That kind of clarity?"

It was Xela who finally asked what the others danced around.

"What are you all talking about? Why are you all being so cryptic?" Her mental voice was confused, a bit on edge.

Kyle, who rarely spoke with much gravity, finally answered. "We always kinda assumed Damon was the hero of the story… just a ruthless one. A necessary evil to save humanity given what we have ahead of us."

He paused.

"But now I kinda get it. This guy… isn't a 'hero'. At least, not in the way we thought."

Xela asked quietly, her usual enthusiasm hushed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean if he was born in the past… in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the same heart and the same mind… he wouldn't have been a legend." Kyle's mental tone was heavy, weighed down by reluctant admiration.

He paused again, this time for effect.

"He'd have been a horror of an era."

Silence.

Kyle shook his head. "A horror just like the ones we read about in history books. Ivan the Terrible. Genghis Khan. Adolf Hitler. The kind of terrible men who understood power… and chose to pursue it to the end."

No one replied as they all glanced at Damon who was still standing calm under the lingering lights of the arena, his eyes completely on the Pre-Chaos beings about to voe, not giving half a mind to his 'team'.

As such, outwardly, the Vanguard Team was silent.

As for the Pre-Chaos crowd, they were also quite stunned. To say that they hadn't noticed a pattern would be a huge lie of epic proportions.

These old fellows were ancient beings whose memories predated the first galaxies, and were not creatures of whim or coincidence like Post Chaos beings. They had observed of cosmic powers, seen battles of pure entropic power and were remnants of a time when existence was still learning to define itself.

Each fellow here had clawed their way through void and silence long before time had form, and each had long ago grown weary of mortals claiming tragedy as triumph when they fell into this place.

But now, they leaned forward with interest.

These humans.

This team.

Hehe, they were not as straightforward as they seemed!

The early participants of this game had given them a good show that was amusing even. They had expected the boisterous ones to unravel quickly, like Henry, whose story was defined by innocence and desperation, or Kyle, whose brutal honesty and lack of fear was rooted in simple intentions.

Bane, with his silent rage, was admired in the way one might admire a wounded predator who had never once licked his wounds, just pressed forward.

Then came Nicholas.

Ah, yes. That one was interesting.

A pauper raised by shame, whose bitterness never fermented into madness. Instead, it turned into refinement.

His cold pride was a reflection of something they had seen before, long ago, in the first ruling kings of emergent species in the chaos, ancient creatures who wielded cruelty with etiquette and civility with a sharpened edge.

Nicholas did not awaken power because of pain, he awakened it because he refused to forget who he was even when no one else remembered.

Dignity without status.

Nobility without a crown.

They liked it, such a person would do well in the Chaotic Void.

Marshal, though… he had truly shaken them.

Even among the Pre-Chaos crowd, the memory of his trial lingered like a long shadow. That hollowed silence in which a child had been carved apart, not physically, but piece by piece through the denial of his very voice.

A boy stripped of narrative, of explanation, of the primal scream every creature is born knowing how to use.

When he spoke aloud, and reality listened and bent for him not as a gift, but as a from of compensation.

They approved of Marshal, partially due to being impressed and partially because he actually spoke in Chaos Origin Script as a mere Post Chaos creature!

And then came Damon, the Casino's final act.

They were expecting something… well, grand!

Something world-ending!

A tragedy of scale, a genocidal act or betrayal or even perhaps the result of some cosmic inheritance passed down from darkened stars or cruel fathers.

Instead… they saw a hallway, a nervous girl and a boy who had once been rejected, now being offered what he once desired.

And he took it.

That definitely confused them.

Many of them had never known the nature of courtship, human or otherwise, nor the cultural oddities of juvenile social hierarchy. They processed the memory as a footnote at first… until Damon spoke.

And when he did, the Pre-Chaos crowd went silent in a different way from the vanguard team.

And this was not for lack of understanding, but because what they heard was familiar.

Value.

That was the word that indirectly cracked the room in half, splitting the vanguard team from the Pre-Chaos beings.

Many of them shifted slightly where they stood, their various forms and figures shimmering steadily. These were words they had said themselves in eons past in different ways, from during battle or through communication with others encountered.

None of them became what they were through fairness.

No, they survived in the cruel chaotic void and subsequently the brutal Bright Realm by becoming useful to forces far greater than themselves… until those forces could no longer afford to lose them.

Damon's words were a mirror.

The Post Chaos human boy had not become something new after rejection!

No, he had simply realized what the universe rewarded, and he had adjusted!

No rage, madness or bitterness, only refinement!

Just like they had.

They watched him, this Prime Representative, with new eyes. This was a person that would take the human race to great heights, possessing the necessary qualities to elevate them to the top of their mere Post Chaos universe.

He was a… a hero!

One Pre-Chaos observer leaned to another and whispered without sound. "This is the kind of creature we worshiped long ago, in the Bright World. Could be be a reincarnation of one of the Chaos Kings?"

"That's not… possible?" The other Pre-Chaos being responded with uncertainty.

Then he paused as his expression changed many times in a single instant, eventually becoming one of realization.

"…No. It actually is possible…!"