[Golden Voyage] An Adventurer in Dark Armor

It was over a week after UHCM returned home and the house was still standing. He recently applied to join a voyage arranged by the returning King of Heroes, Gilgamesh. The approaching night is strangely relative to how UHCM felt about that war against Australia's former ruling faction, the Monsuta. A dying light and a dying reason; his faith in his powerful friend was wavering because it was he who took the initiative against the Monsuta as many times before it was the opposing factions that commit the initiative. It was further concerning when both he and Zin are participating as Shadin, the specifically powerful friend issued a By-Any-Means-Necessary (BAMN) victory. That means even civilians will either be orphaned or killed in the conflict that UHCM sees as unneeded. Ironically, he has no formal voice because his jurisdiction lies with assuring the survival of the Yuudeshi and eliminating ulterior threats like that communication station in Darwin; it is outside his position to do war advisory, or so as he thought. He cannot wrap his head a lot into politics and while people can peer into his psyche quickly, he is disconnected from other people that he cannot detect things like they can. While as the Theater Master, he preferably stays in the shadow of each production's backstage. It can be said that he does not like being around a crowd if there is nothing to distract him and it could be why he is easily distracted; he chose to distract himself so he does not have to see the crowd that surrounds him each time he is outside in Karakura Central. With each time he thinks of the question of what if he was manipulated, a pawn so to say. There is always a question; who will lead and who will follow?

While waltzing the idea, UHCM was going to get his dinner. Nothing short of casual as he simply pulls out a frozen dinner in a box and tears open by the corner of the cardboard top. Leaving it mostly opened and using one side of it as a hinge, he opens the microwave and places the frozen dinner into the microwave. After that, he shuts it and types in, "[Clear]-[7]-[3]-[0]-[Start]" before the microwave hums with life, incubating the frozen dinner out of its futile slumber. While it is going, UHCM paces back and forth impatiently, leering at the microwave like a disappointed father to a bad apple of a child. An odd feeling creeps up his spine as UHCM could feel his eyes heating up and saliva receding to his throat, making his tongue robbed of moisture. He instinctively places his hand on his chest to check his heart beat. He could not feel anything, not even the thick fabric of his blue hooded sweater. It was not a heart attack as he would have felt it by now since he tempered his body to detect it a few seconds ahead of time, the few seconds he needed to use his cellphone to call in emergency. His eyes getting hotter and it is becoming harder for UHCM to see, even with his glasses on; a pair of bifocals that are strong enough to make what appears to be looking through a heavily steamed glass become clear enough to see the brush strokes in Leonardo Di'Vinci's Mona Lisa. When he looks at his body for a brief moment as he is supporting himself on the counter because his legs are getting weaker by the moment, he sees a haze of blue, deep violet, purple and dark night. He feels no pain other than a mild headache that soon relents. After the headache passes, his head felt lighter and he could only see the floor approaching him like a car rushing down into a fountain with malice of the park's beauty.

When UHCM gets up from his kitchen floor, he begin noticing that something has changed. He is missing a house and his kitchen is floating upside down over the vast blue water while nothing is falling out of the kitchen, not even UHCM himself. He examines himself and notices that he is now has much polygon as a Final Fantasy VII character before high definition was introduced. Testing out, he pops off his head and punts it towards the water before it slingshot back onto his neck upon impact with the water."Yep. In a dream." UHCM comments without a hint of concern as it is not the only time he has dreams like that. Suddenly, a giant-headed Ravana Ichiro rushes out of the water with mouth wide-opened with shark teeth inside as he chops onto UHCM like a fish. Now UHCM stands in the middle of a rainbow coated cube as UHCM's head has replaced his pelvis and his pelvis replaced his head. "Now the dream is calling me a dickhead in double meaning." UHCM comments without a care other than being annoyed. He disassembles himself and after reassembling, he is normal other than his manhood being bigger than normal. UHCM reaches into his mouth and pulls out a shrinking machine from "Honey! I shrunk the kids!" from his throat. Just like that, he blasts his manhood back to normal size. He approaches one wall and pushes against it, revealing a door into a Hollywood Studio, where the cube was held up by wooden rigs. As he turns his head to the right, he sees the entire cast being child clones of Shadin Yuudeshi while one is cross-dressing as a southern belle; wig and parasol too. He turns away and goes to the exit with the word uttered from his throat, "Nope."

As he walks out of the studio, he is back in his broken kitchen without a house and the door he just walked out was nowhere to be seen. He looks back at himself and sees himself as a silhouette. With a flick of his wrist, a paper appear in his grasp and he reads, "Who am I? Where's my pain to follow?" He looks toward the water and sees a giant-headed Iori Sugiura rushing out and chops on him like Ravana Ichiro did before. Within a blinking moment, UHCM is now standing on the side of a building looming over a grand city that is hard to remember which. Suddenly, a sharp agony crosses his chest as a black-bladed katana was the culprit. UHCM thought it was Ichigo Kurosaki's, but when he turns around, his prying eyes can only see the sinister smirk of Souske Aizen. Filled with rage, he wills his Scottish Lowlander Claymore, Riposte to appear and as it does, he impales himself and Aizen. The two now falls off the building and towards the street below. Upon impact, Aizen vanishes and UHCM falls through the city street like it was water. He struggles to draw Riposte out of himself and while he does so, the black void begins to turn red. The next thing he knows, he is laying on the beach. He looks around and sees Misaiko Sugiura laying next to him and Saeko Busujima laying on the other side of him. UHCM comments to himself with a pout, "And I am not aroused by this. I'm getting too old for this crap." Without warning, a colossal head of Schrodinger emerges from the ocean and lets out a loud, prolonged meow as rainbow lasers shoot out from his eyes and psychedelic vomit oozes from his widely gaping, happy mouth. And then it all goes white, which UHCM promptly dug himself out to realize he is in the middle of a mountaintop. He turns around and receives a pimp-slap from Shadin Yuudeshi that sends him flying and grow black wings before being batted the wings off by Radioactive, who is using a cucumber as a bat. It was not long before he is back on the floor of the broken kitchen that looms upside down over the ocean. He looks at himself casually and sees himself as a white silhouette instead of a black silhouette.

And then he blacks out for the last time.

"Attention, all passengers!"

The voice of the Golden King released, as at last he walked out of his cabin, looking directly at the main galley of the group that he had assembled, his hands opening wide. "I thank you all for accepting the invitation to join this spectacular journey, the journey that will go down in history as the greatest journey ever undertaken in this era. In this journey, I plan and expect to see the greatest heroes to emerge from this era." The male continued, as he began to walk on the air, the boat that he had just taken out of port completely still in the water. "From this point onwards, your job is to survive. Make sure you acquire sustenance for yourself, and not cause trouble so long as you are aboard my vessel, the Golden Hind!" He explained, making their task rather obvious. Quite frankly, they had to LIVE with each other for the duration fo the journey.

The boat had just left from Minatumi Harbor, having collected all of its passengers there. Two weeks ago, Gilgamesh had sent out his letters of invitation. The letters had clearly stated the intention and his goals: To learn the new heroes of this day and age, to improve upon those who would take up the mantle of 'hero', and to reach the city Atlantis. It made it clear that this would be a luxury cruise, and they would be able to choose how they spent their days, as long as they did not cause violence aboard the ship that was unorganized. After all, what a better place to perform training then in the middle of the ocean?

"As you well know, the target of our voyage is Atlantis. Sapphire Hands will report to Ravana Ichiro, and the Jade Journeymen have their contact with Jaeden Crow. We have assembled twenty-two of our universe's finest for this journey. My expectations are high, and may your spirits be higher. There are enough rooms on each of the floor for every person on the voyage, with the Sapphire Survivors on the floor below this, a commons area on the floor below them filled with every entertainment desirable, and on the very last level quarters for the Journeyers. Please, enjoy this magnificent treasure of my garden and show me that this trip was worth all of my expectation."

* * *

Standing among the group who are attending the orientation was a person donned thickly in dark iron armor with its arms crossed as it listens to the famed King of Heroes. Despite the creaking of its armor pieces rubbing against each other, it was ominously quiet as it was identifiable to be a tank-class "hero" while sub-classing as an artillery archer when one would spot its massive bow resting on a nearby table with a quiver of twelve miniature lances that are each a man high in length while noticeably heavy by five pounds. If one was very close, they could hear breathing within its helmet, but the breaths are well-managed so it will not be noticeable in short distances without being in hugging distance. As the speech goes on, the iron archer flexes its fingers, presumably to be adjusting its gauntlets for better comfort, despite it would look very uncomfortable for a normal person to be in it for prolonged use; either it is just a superhuman or not human at all. By the time Gilgamesh finishes his speech, the iron archer slams its right fist into its breastplate while standing dutifully straight before motioning its right hand off to the side smoothly; what it did was an honorary salute shared with knights who are not all that flexible enough to do a military salute in their heavy armor. Just as it motions its hand to the side, it turns around to the bow and collects both the ten pound bow and sixty-five pound quiver of arrows. It could be that it is eager to find its room or it could be that it is intending to come back without its heavy gear; either way, it leaves the galley and goes to find its room in the Journeyman level, armor clanking and clapping as it walks.

After a while of searching, it finds its room and enters it. Just as Gilgamesh promised, the room is luxurious and without fail, it seems to bother the iron archer, but perhaps it is due to how contrasting the iron archer appears in the Golden Hind entirely. Since it is someone else's ship, the iron archer resigns its displeasure and tries to enjoy what's there. Already in its room are luggage that is packed with clothing and costumes while there are boxes made for carrying portable crafting equipment for metalworking, woodworking and tailoring. How in the world of artistry would an iron golem of a person would do with crafting? It may as well explain how it acquired the bow and lances. Oddly, it leaves its door open for people to come in as it pulls out a hard-cover journal and a pen to write with, rather old fashion for this era. As others are free to waltz in to check up with it out of curiosity, the iron archer begins to write. For Gilgamesh and the Golden Crew and Sapphire Crew, its roster name was "Dark Hero" as if it is keeping an alias and would be accurate given its dark iron armor. For Jade Journeymen, it is merely identifiable as an ironclad archer with a very big bow.

A strange occurrence went over as it was rather familiar to me, yet I could not touch the notion of what it is that haunted me before. All I could remember is fainting in the kitchen of my large abode after the events that transpired during the War for Australia. I merely joined the war because it is both a selfish and a selfless reason; it is because it was my duty as his first generation Shadow, born from the devastation and matured through devotion. It is hard to explain why I followed him. I admit that I was fearing his power when I hear the cries of other Shinigami as they are cut down and I ended up underneath one of the corpses, stuck looking into the dead woman's eyes while having my lips covered by the sash that I wear across my chest. When it quiet down, I see him, alone in the midst of the postmortem. Perhaps I followed because he has something I ended up no longer having; a way. While the Golden Voyager is going to make the departure, I am assigned by Gilgamesh to be with the other adventurers under the Jade division. A mongrel to his eyes or a hopeful to eventually acquire his audience. While it would be proper to type into an interface since technology allows us to write our journals in tablets and use an interactive keypad instead of a pen, I choose to exercise my mind and mandible's agility with the pen on paper over a hard covered journal. For now, I will be trying to keep up with the routines as I list below.

1. Receive Chores.
2. Do Chores.
3. Rest.
4. Practice Heavy Armor Mobility and Endurance.
5. Rest.
6. Practice Weapon Swapping Endurance.
7. Rest.
8. Practice Weapon Use Mobility and Endurance.
9. Rest.

Hopefully following my own legacy will help me.