| Rule 1 just stares at him.....
"Are you sure?" Rule 1 asks softly, "I am authorized this, but
once this is done, there is no going back. You'll remain the same age,
once you reach age eighteen, while everyone and everything else besides
your fellow Champions grows old, dies. You'll remain the same, physically,
while everything else changes."
The Rule did look rather anxious in trying to convey the import of this
transition, and the others could find no fault in that. It was a rather
permanent transition. He then went on to explain that being a Champion
meant being "on call." Being ready to at a moments notice to go off on
an assignment for the Rules or Agents. But for the most part a Champion
got to live their life as he or she saw fit.
"Yes, I am." Jack says, looking up at Fre', who has a startled and befuddled
look on her face.
"Very well," Rule 1 says, smiling a small smile. "But I believe that
Fre' wants to say something?"
"It not right," Fre' whispers, looking down lovingly at the little boy
she felt was like her own cub, "Boy need human mom, but I not."
"I could do a little....adjusting," Rule 1 said softly, "I am not allowed
to return you and the others who are the product of the ‘Two Girls' Prophecies,
but I do have some leeway on just what type of female you can be
from now on. We have three options: remain as you are as an ogress, got
the full route and turn you back into a human being, or....we could give
you the ability to shift back and forth between ogress and human."
"Huh? What third opt...opti....thing like?" Fre' asks, intrigued.
"You'd have the intellect of a human being in both forms....and the
ability to switch to the powerful form of an ogress," the Rule explains,
"That is, you'd be a human woman who'd be able to assume the form of an
ogress...with all of the powers and assets of that powerful form."
"Sound good!" Fre' says, wide eyed and happy, looking down at Jack,
"That way can be ogress still and be mom of my cub!"
The Rule then goes to the others and in the end the Belbozes who'd lost
their ability to cast mage spell regain them, while retaining the bodies
they'd grown fond of upon their awakening in them.
That done......
Those who had been mortal felt time slipping from them, acknowledging
them as an equal and excepting them from its jurisdiction. In their minds
they see a shadowy, black cloaked figure, Death, shrug and reach over and
erase their names from a dark and ominous appointment book.
No going back......
It's a liberating feeling, this sudden freedom. However it is tempered
by a fact that has already occurred to them right before this had happened.
Immortal they may be now, for all practical purposes, they aren't above
feeling pain......and deadly incidents will never be easily ignored. That
healthy fear is a part in them all before and remains so now, keeping them
from making TOO rash of things.....
"Now I must go, my job complete," Rule 1 says, "Farewell."
As the new Champions got about figuring out what next to do, the Rule
fades out and then looks over to the Angel and Agent who'd been watching.
"I don't get it sometimes," the Rule mutters, "I can understand the
others perfectly well, the woman who'd been the subject of the ‘Two Girl'
Prophecy. We were able to finally..... finally right the wrongs
done by their initial induction. Then when I was about to finally go and
free the one who'd looked up into the skies at night in each and every
one of his reincarnations, our very first Champion, he goes and BEGS to
stay in, albeit in better conditions."
"Elric always was like that," the Angel says, understandingly,
"Always hard to figure out. Now at least he's found a situation he's happy
with....even if he doesn't remember his earlier selves."
"True, and it did give me leeway at giving Fre' that ability to shift
forms," Rule 1 sighs as they leave for the Dark Tower.
-
 Meanwhile,
the new Champions are now deciding on what to call themselves......
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