Chapter Text
Luz Noceda exited the gates of the town with her Palisman Stringbean in tow, the suburban streets of Gravesfield giving way for the short road leading to the many districts before her. With a motion, she brushed her short brown hair aside and gazed upon the place. Given she spends a large part of her time in a alternate reality where wizards and odd creatures built an unstable society on top of a deceased monster, you’d think nothing could amaze her anymore. Yet, as she walked further and stared at the many different styles and looks of the place Luz couldn’t resist being somewhat mesmerized by the sight of these wildly different landscapes lying before her, smushed together so tightly that urban skyscrapers and colorful suburbs could segue into snowy hills and spread-out fields almost naturally. Almost.
‘Enjoying the scenery?’
The human witch turned around when a youthful voice posed that question. Before her stood a small humanoid with tan-yellow skin, bushy white hair and eyebrows, a small pointy nose and a large blue blotch on the left-side of their face clad in a half-blue, half-grey sort of robe with a dark purple nightcap on their head, staring up at her with two expecting scarlet eyes and a big smile.
Luz happily returned the Collector’s smile: ‘Oh, certainly. To be honest, when I first heard of this Nexus thing I imagined a mixed reality like – sort of if Suda51 merged Gravesfield with a Picasso painting and then sent the Boiling Isles on a crash course with it. Not that these stylized city blocks don’t please me, but I expected a little more…pizazz.’
The Collector pouted grumpily before snapping his fingers and causing a spritz of confetti to materialize over Luz’ head.
‘Huzzah,’ they flatly muttered.
Their taller companion’s brief look of surprise melted into an amused laugh. As she crouched down to hug the Collector, she chuckled: ‘I am happy to be here, buddy. Trust me, by the time Frisk and I meet I’ll be warmed up to this already.’
As she said this, someone approached with the sudden, echoing ring of a bell. The two looked to see a tall, slender young man walk up to them. He wore a white shirt, green pants and a green tie bearing a strange logo. Two blood-red eyes peered at them beneath an incredibly long mop of jet-black hair. As he approached, a subtle aura of power and mystique could be felt emanating from his very being.
Izuru Kamukura, the Ultimate Ultimate, the Grim Reaper himself.
‘Collector,’ he stated in a deep voice, flashing a small smirk at the person in question. In response, the Collector burst loose from Luz’ embrace and ran up to Izuru to give him a hug of his own.
As Luz got back on her feet, she offered a handshake. ‘Hi, my name is Luz. You’re Collector’s associate, right?’
‘More or less,’ the man answered as he accepted the handshake. Despite the paleness of his skin and visible frailness of his fingers, his grip was firm and strong. ‘I’d call us work associates. Izuru Kamukura, pleased to meet you.’
‘Work associates?’
The Collector eagerly nodded before loosening his clutch on Izuru’s long legs and giving the guy a ‘go ahead’ gesture. With a mildly annoyed sigh, Kamukura closed his eyes and lifted his arms as his black hair started flaring up and his body was wrapped in a red aura. As Luz watched in wonder, his head was suddenly covered by a dark black hood attached to an equally dark black cape with a pointy collar and a red rim. Izuru brought his hands closer together to let a long black staff materialize in his hands, a big metal blade growing out of the far side of it.
Suddenly, the human witch realized she has seen this kind of image on countless illustrations alongside War, Conquest and Weird Al Yankovic. She felt the color drain from her face as she realized she was staring at-
‘Death,’ Izuru interrupted the writer. ‘And I don’t mean it metaphorically, or rhetorically, or poetically, or theoretically, or any other fancy way. I am the Grim Reaper, straight. UP.’
Luz just meekly nodded, trying to find her voice back. This was the first surprise, blowing her expectations for the Nexus out of the water before even meeting the pen pal that lived here in the first place, and it left her with no clear idea of what would be next. It was exciting, yet a little scary – just like her first day at Eda’s.
Then something hit her. ‘So, by work associates you mean…’
‘Oh, nothing concerning,’ the Collector reassured. ‘Turns out the celestial order is pretty much a glorified teacher’s lounge. Calm air, spacious, the worst part is the paperwork.’
‘At least, once Zeus was fired for sexual harassment,’ Kamukura grumbled.
‘But yeah, it’s pretty neat. I can’t tell you too much, but let’s just say that during the soul trek between my departure and your last birthday I wound up walking into Izuru one day.’
‘I was just cleaning up after the latest incident between Task Force 141 and the Konni Group: heaven, hell, heaven, heaven, hell, purgatory, hell, hell, hell, heaven, purgatory…I was contemplating to ask for a pay raise when suddenly this little guy popped in and asked me what I was doing with the souls of the deceased.’
‘Turns out he’s the Reaper! Then I told him I am a celestial being, spawned in some fun stuff and he promptly dragged me to his boss to ask for clarification.’
‘I don’t call turning the rubble of bombed buildings into psychedelic rubber bananas ‘fun’. I asked the Higher Management for clarification and suddenly there’s Archivists and Collectors and that kind of shit.’
Luz hesitatingly asked: ‘And the higher management is…’
‘The gods.’
‘…Okay, continue.’
And the Collector continued: ‘So, turns out after the Titan finally passed on there was a hole in the bureaucracy. Now what do we do, we have no representation for the Demon Realm!!! King is too young, everyone else is already occupied and ain’t no way Lucifer is gonna make it back up here. TLDR; say hello to your new God…-like deity.’
Then Izuru spoke: ‘So we had an impromptu welcome party: Yahweh provided the music, Allah wrote a speech, and Shiva did some rapid decoration, it was great.’
‘They all exist?!’
‘If there’s a religion around it, it probably exists,’ Kamukura confirmed. ‘That’s about all I can tell you to justify the fact I get a paycheck, everything else is trade secret.’
Luz struggled to wrap her head around all these revelations, taking a moment to let it all click into place in her head. The Collector just hooked their reality onto a multiverse. Doing so was a collaborative effort with the Grim Reaper from said multiverse. They met while he was reaping souls from a warzone. He works for many gods and deities in what amounts to a divine version of Community or The Office. Papa Titan used to be in there, but now the Collector is.
‘So every time I sent a letter to Frisk, I was mailing to another universe,’ she rationalized out loud. ‘Which would basically be no different than sending letters to and from the Boiling Isles. And the Titan was more or less the Demon Realm’s god but now…okay, fanfic logic, I can make sense of this. Neat!’
Izuru smiled appreciatively. This was a much more positive reaction than expected. The last person he let in on this asked so many questions they literally blew up their own head.
Luz smiled as well, her curiosity now sparked intensely. ‘So, mister mishmash of divinity, what mishmash did my world just end up in?’
The Nexus, as it turns out, was a realm created by forging six (and now seven) completely separate worlds together into one hub connected by a sprawling road. The circumstances behind the sudden joining of these worlds has remained a mystery for the ages beyond ‘so these characters can bounce off of each other for your entertainment’, but after settling into this new coexistence the inhabitants have collectively decided to drop the subject and live as one going forward. The following worlds have been joined together, one more canon-compliantly than the other:
Danganronpa: The world of the visual novels, where hope and despair decide all. The first world to be inducted to the Nexus, it’s society had previously been torn asunder by the despair-obsessed sociopath known as Junko Enoshima. Her final plan, Killing Games where people possessing Ultimate Talents were forced in a monitored kill-or-be-killed situation, resulted in her own death and the survivors growing the resolve to fix the damages she’s caused to the world. By the time it became the first world to join the Nexus, her former manservant Izuru Kamukura had taken up the mantle of Death to atone for his actions under Junko’s command. Nearly every character has been resurrected by the merge barring the Monokubs. Junko is currently MIA.
My Hero Academia: The world of the manga and anime, where superheroes are just as flawed and PR-valuing as the normal people. The school of U.A. educates and molds the next generation of heroes, most prominently the colorful cast attending Class 1-A. Initially just a cute story about a formerly powerless kid becoming the world’s number one hero, the arcs have over time grown darker and more impactful, with mass death counts among the cast and massive changes to both superhero society and the normal world…so thank fuck for the Nexus hitting the reset button all the way to cute superhero antics. The characters do remember the now-undone events, however, and work to avoid things going downhill as hard as it had done previously.
RWBY: The world of the acclaimed web animation, where fairytales turn into badasses wielding technologically advanced weaponry. The fallout between the ancient lovers Ozma and Salem spawned an endless war between the Huntsmen, a collection of young heroes fighting for the side of good under Ozma’s many reincarnations, and the Grimm, a horde of dark emotion-eating monsters rampaging in the name of evil under Salem, cursed with immortality and indestructability by the Gods of Light and Darkness and now hell-bent on omnicide as the biggest murder-suicide in history. Again, the Nexus hit the reset button hard with this world when it came to death and destruction and the characters are resolute in making sure it doesn’t happen again.
Hazbin Hotel: The world of the web animation turned Prime Original musical comedy, taking place in Hell itself. Charlie Morningstar, daughter of Lucifer himself, seeks to end the annual killings caused by Hell’s overpopulation by setting up a hotel where sinners can earn their redemption in spite of scrutiny from both Heaven and Hell pushing her efforts back. Some time after the Nexus was initially formed the hotel’s financial backer Alastor had found his way back to the mortal coil, forcing the Gods to let the Hotel crew access the living world as well to try and keep him in check. Also, Izuru has the Exorcists taken care of.
Somewhere in the fluffy clouds of heaven, a big chest shook and rumbled as the faint screams of frustration belonging to Lute and her kin struggled to extend beyond the massive lock keeping them trapped inside.
Ask Frisk and Company: The world of Undertale, if Frisk did a pacifist route that broke the cycle of restarting and maintained a fourth wall-shattering askblog about their subsequent adventures. It incorporates many fan favorite concepts (primarily ships and certain headcanon voices) as well as bringing in newer ideas (primarily OCs and bridging a whole multiverse with similar works of Undertale fiction). Shortly after Izuru and the Collector met, they tested the waters of bringing in the latter’s world by setting up a pen pal connection between Luz and Frisk. If you know both of them, you can guess it worked.
Hellsing Ultimate Abridged: The world of Hellsing Ultimate, but from a more darkly comedic angle. Alucard is the current form of the original Count of Wallachia, a trollish and violence-loving vampire working for the Hellsing organization to subdue other, more villainous vampires. In his efforts he is (reluctantly) supported by his boss (and alleged love interest) Integra Hellsing, her butler Walter (until his betrayal), his little sidekick Police Girl (real name Seras Victoria) and French mercenary Pip Bernadotte (her boyfriend). He still bears Schrodinger’s powers and Millenium and Maxwell are still rotting down there, but Pip and Anderson are still around and Walter is now back on their side.
And newest among them, The Owl House: The world of brand violation in the eyes of Disney and good TV in the eyes of anyone else. Unappreciated for her creative and out-of-the-box way of life, Luz winds up accidentally stumbling into a world of magic and learns all about the Demon Realm while bunking with the rebellious Eda Clawthorne in the titular location. Mostly canon-compliant, Belos is dead and the old house in Gravesfield now bears a portal door to the Boiling Isles, but may occasionally reference MoringMark comics and the like.
‘And there’s your mishmash,’ Izuru concluded.
Luz nodded. She had been walking down the street with him and the Collector while he extolled a more condensed version of the upper paragraphs of exposition to her and was already trying to decide whether to endlessly harass her divine companions with questions about the Nexus or just find everything out for herself.
She decided to stick with the former for the moment. ‘Well, it sounds pretty exciting! So, how did people react when they heard another world came in?’
‘That depends, how did your people react to joining us?’
The human witch thought of an answer, but Collector was ahead of her: ‘They took it pretty well, all things considered. Maybe our Chibiverse escapades got them used to the idea, or Eda and Luz joining this one mobile game, but most of them were pretty open to ‘new neighbors’ from other worlds!’
‘Gee, I wonder why,’ Kamukura dryly muttered while looking at Luz, who put a hand behind her head and chuckled shyly. ‘But that’s good; it was basically the same thing here, barring a couple of buzzkills concerned about culture shock or something. Like bruh, we have the living dead up in this bitch, I think they’ll feel right at home! Sheesh…’
He then stopped in front of a large house. It was only then that his company realized they had walked quite a bit from the point where Gravesfield segued into the rest of the Nexus and were now in simpler surroundings. Grassier. Snowier. Canadian.
The Collector and the Reaper calmly watched as Luz looked around the area, calmly dragging her eyes across the scenery until she suddenly froze and focused on the imposing shape of Mt. Ebott not too far away. The realization hit her and she turned back to the others with a wide smile and sparkles in her eyes. Their response was a set of two amused smiles.
‘Hey, you did want to meet your pen pal first and foremost,’ the Collector said as they slowly levitated past Luz.
‘Knock yourself out, girl,’ Kamukura spoke as he also strolled past the human witch. ‘We still got a ton of paperwork waiting for us up there.’
He used the scythe to tear open a swirling red portal, stepped into it and vanished. The Collector waved at their human friend and vanished into the vortex as well, after which it closed itself and vanished too. Suddenly Luz was alone, standing before the Dreemurr residence.
Well, here goes, was the young lady’s optimistic thought before calmly pressing the doorbell and waiting. After a couple of seconds, the door was opened by a small child with yellowish skin, short brown hair, a blue sweater with purple lines and two seemingly-shut eyes.
Luz recognized her pen pal, sparkles returning to her eyes and smile returning to her face.
Frisk recognized their pen pal, returning the wide smile and opening their eyes to reveal even more sparkles.
The following squeals of happiness and excitement were loud enough to pierce the heavens and reach the celestial office, where Izuru and Collector briefly diverted their attention from the piles of documents that needed to be read and filled out to exchange a smile and fist bump.