Seducing the Guideverse With My System — Raising an Anomaly [BL]

"Ah, Dad. Already starting strong, are we?"

Gabriel was barely fazed by his father’s harsh words.

He’d heard the man say the same slur growing up—except those times he wasn’t referring to him.

Well, mostly anyway.

"Get up and keep running, boy. Do you want to be one of those fags running a drag show?" His father would say back when he was a kid training for his school’s basketball league.

"Men don’t cry."

"Stop being a damn bitch."

"I didn’t raise no pussy."

All those words and more played one after the other in Gabriel’s mind as he stared at his old man.

"Sweet dying Jesus, Jerome." His mother grabbed his father’s shoulder before he could start anything. "Please. You know Gabriel is a Hunter. Plus it was expected he’d be in this city after... those videos—"

"Don’t patronise me, woman." Jerome snapped, arm flying off his wife’s grip. "Those videos are exactly why I don’t want to see his dick-loving face around me. What happened to texting?"

Gabriel’s lips thinned.

Of course.

His mother hadn’t even told his father about this meeting to begin with.

"I see there’s been a mix-up." The SS-Rank smiled, hands slipping back into the pockets of his black pants. "I’ll take my leave now."

His mother shook her head. "Gabriel, please. We... we just want to talk."

"Speak for yourself, mother." The space god had already turned away, attention fixing on the exit. "You have my number. Text or call me. Maybe we can talk if I decide to answer—"

"Your father has cancer."

Gabriel came to an abrupt halt.

A long beat of silence passed, the only sounds that echoed through the restaurant being the clattering of dishes, cutlery, and a few people in certain booths whispering to themselves about entirely different things.

He flung his head back slowly, iridescent orbs narrowing first on his mother.

Then to his father, who was now looking away with one hand under his stubble-filled chin.

Gabriel shouldn’t care.

He should just say it straight up right now that he didn’t give a fuck if the old man did a back flip into the Amazon forest and got lost forever.

But deep down?

He knew that wasn’t true.

And he hated himself for that. For caring.

"Cancer." He repeated, dragging cautious steps back to the table. "What kind?"

His mother sniffled, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe off sweat on her forehead and the wetness building up in her eyes.

"It’s one of them rare ones. Caused by too much Aether exposure." She exhaled through her mouth. "Or at least, it’s believed to. The doctor said I should be affected too since we both had similar levels of exposure. But this thing is like a cosmically bad game of Russian roulette."

Speaking so quickly had her patting her chest to calm down.

Gabriel’s voice softened by just a bit. "Why didn’t anyone tell me? Wait." He lifted a hand. "Don’t even answer that." A light scoff. "How long does he have?"

Jerome sniggered. "Can’t wait till the man calling you out on your sins dies, huh?"

"Jerome!" His wife scolded. "This is exactly why I didn’t tell you Gabriel was coming."

"Ugh, it’s fine, Mom." Gabriel bit through the irritation simmering from his soul, gaze pinned on his father. "I’ve grown to understand there’s no saving the old man from being stuck in the fifties."

His father’s face twisted. "You li—"

"Do you know what was so popular back then, father?" Gabriel crashed onto a seat with no care in the world. Then he pinched out a small fold of his skin, lifting that arm for his parents to see. "Discrimination against people like us. I mean, it still exists now, but back then? Oh, you won’t even be privileged enough to dine amongst white folk."

"Boy, are you trying to lecture me on the history I lived?"

"No. I’m merely calling out someone who’s been through systemic oppression for carrying those same ideologies and pouring them on another minority." Gabriel ignored his mother’s pleading look, leaning forward until his father couldn’t avoid his eyes even if he tried.

"Cancer or not, you ain’t got long to live on this fucked up planet." A tilt of his head. "So tell me, father... is this the mentality you’d want to be remembered by? A man who spent his life hating on something as harmless as love?"

When he let out those words, he also targeted them at his mother.

His father might be more vocal about his homophobia, but he knew deep down his mother was deeply embarrassed by those videos and pictures.

Embarrassed at the possibility of her son liking men.

And just like he kept on saying... he didn’t give a fuck. The only reason he hadn’t teleported out of here was because of one thing and one thing only.

They were still his family. He still had a shred of hope for them after all.

Perhaps sticking around was his way of preserving that shred before it disappeared forever.

★★★★★

Pantheon Base

"We’ve met each other more within the past couple of months than we’ve done in a whole decade."

Loki walked into the dimly lit hall, one hand on their waist.

They studied the faces of everyone sitted on the round table ahead.

Without asking, it was easy to tell there was something wrong.

That made their previous snark tone down. "Christ, did someone die?"

All heads turned to Kali, making the lord of desire do the same.

The time goddess’ violet eyes gleamed under the dim lighting as she rose to her feet.

"No, Loki." A pause. "But with the vision I saw... that fate doesn’t seem far away for at least some of us in this room."

Loki’s brows furrowed.

Luckily, Kali didn’t leave them hanging—waving a hand toward them. Glowing projections flickered to life around them, making their frown deepen.

It was a vague scene.

A glowing figure fell from the sky, crashing into a crowded city as people ran for their lives. When the projection zoomed to the person’s face, Loki’s heart skipped a beat.

Apollo?

"In my vision," Kali spoke up as the projections switched to another scene, "I saw frame-by-frame details of your deaths. Something disastrous is coming to Earth. Something that’ll have even the Pantheon at its knees."

This time the scene showed Wukong being ripped vertically in half. Then it switched to one last scene that had Loki’s breathing stuck.

A scene of them.

"I still don’t know when this is going to happen," Kali went on. "But I do know we’re running out of time. This is no Void Entity or Devourer. It’s... it’s fundamentally worse."

In this scene, Loki was already on the ground, half of their face incinerated clean off until there was nothing but a skull and charred flesh.

They persevered, crawling away from something—

—Only to get completely annihilated without a trace or screams.

The projections dissipated into specks of violet light, leaving the hall in utter silence.

Without warning, Loki remembered.

Similar descriptions given to them, Gabriel, Valentine and the others by Ambrose. Descriptions which at the time they had not taken too seriously.

"They’re really coming..."

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