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Canon Side Story: Distorted Reflections, Part 1
🕑 Added 2025-07-11 06:25:05 +0000 UTCA/N
Quick explanation. This is a canon side story, but you don’t have to read it; it doesn’t actually have any real bearing on the story. And it probably won’t make sense until the very end as to why it’s canon.
It’s mostly a side story because I know people wouldn’t enjoy an arc that was ‘Nerfed Wilhelm’ as many would say.
Also, this isn’t taking the place of the normal chapter; that’s coming up next.
At the end of the day, this is most just a muse, it probably won't last more than 10 parts to wrap it up.
Also, I wrote it in a different tense because it’s a bit easier with this kind of plot and doesn’t run concurrent with the actual story.
[Line Break]
It was a rather unremarkable day.
Besides the sounds of medical equipment giving off a repetitive beeping every designated time lapse, the room was silent.
This had been the same for several weeks at this point.
The only occupant of this room was a young man with striking red hair.
On schedule, the door opened without knocking. A nurse entered, not even bothering with etiquette, as this had been routine for a while now. She came in, checked the medical equipment, and checked the fluid bags that were hooked up to his arm.
Doing her normal duties, she cleaned up what she needed to and changed various clothes around the room before taking everything and leaving.
As soon as the door clicked, the young man on the bed had his eyes shoot open.
Wilhelm opened his eyes.
He nearly jumped up, but an excruciating pain ran through his body, enough that he nearly screamed out.
He clutched his chest before anything else.
Without hesitation, he ripped off the blanket and clothing. There was a big bandage over his chest that was still wet.
Right over his heart.
The quick motions sent another jolt of pain through his body. But pain was an old friend; he was able to endure it and not shout out. It made him dizzy and disoriented, but his instincts, built up over time, had screamed at him that he wasn’t somewhere familiar.
Therefore, he gritted his teeth and didn’t make a sound.
Weak.
He felt so weak.
Why was he so weak? It was like all the strength had been drained from his body, and the pain?
He clutched his head and couldn’t recall.
He took a deep breath; even though that sent another jolt through his body, he kept his mind as stable as possible as his body slowly bobbed back and forth uncontrollably.
It was then realization set in, a moment of clarity.
He couldn’t feel his aura.
He couldn’t feel his Demonic Power.
He couldn’t feel his magical energy.
His Spiritual Power.
His Divine Authority was absent.
He looked down at his finger; his ring wasn’t there.
He hesitantly reached up and touched his head, then ran a hand through his hair.
It was…short, far too short. And the hair binding that his teacher had given him was nowhere to be seen.
“...Ddraig? Musū Tengai?” He weakly called out.
There was no reply.
He felt a strange emptiness.
With the last spark of energy he had, he reached for his magical circuits. His body was in excruciating pain; the thought of activating his magical circuits in this state was…unwise. Still, he ignored that and went ahead.
There was nothing.
He couldn’t find his Magical Circuits.
There was a moment where he wanted to call out in anger and pain, but he held it in. He wasn’t the type to throw a tantrum or fall into despair at the first moment of hardship.
He didn’t know what was going on, but he would get to the bottom of it.
He tried to step out of bed and immediately almost fell over, only barely catching himself on the side of the bed.
Pain jolted through his body again, a reminder that he wasn’t in good health. His body was weak, oh so very weak. In fact, he hadn’t felt this…human in a very long time.
It took a bit. Maybe an hour, but eventually, he was able to grit his teeth and stand up on his own feet.
There was a sense of vertigo, like something was wrong. No, it was more instinctual than that to him; there was certainly something wrong, even without the knowledge of what was ‘missing.’
He grabbed the metal scaffold that was holding the fluid bags that were latched onto his body, and he detached everything unnecessary. Though the heartbeat monitor was on his finger, he stared at it for several moments.
Unsure of what to do, hesitant, scared even. He knew if he took it off, someone would be alerted and come looking. The model looked…old? He traced the cord to the machine at his bedside and stared at it.
He couldn’t claim to be a master on equipment like this, but he liked to think he was smart enough to make a few deductions.
Either way, he was going to leave the room to figure things out, so he took a chance. Rather than take the thing off his finger, he unplugged the machine in its entirety from the wall.
He stayed still for a minute, then two, and a few minutes later, no one came in. He scratched his head and thanked whatever scrooge stopped them from upgrading the hospital equipment. Because he was fairly sure modern varieties had their own internal battery supply that was supposed to alert just as well if something cut off the supply of power to the machine that’s supposed to monitor patients.
Wilhelm grabbed the metal holding for the various things poked into his body, but he barely lifted it up off the ground before the left side of his body gave out.
He almost fell over again, gasping as the flashes of pain overcame him.
However, he gritted his teeth and pulled it to the side of the room, towards the cabinets.
To the current him, it was a herculean feat, and even tears swelled up in his eyes uncontrollably as he collapsed against the cabinet ledge. He pulled one drawer open after another, pulling things out, tossing them to the side until he found a syringe and needle still in their pristine package.
Gently, he pulled the needles out of his arms, letting out a breath once it was finished. He looked at the hanging bags of liquid and found the one for morphine. He used the syringe and filled it up before injecting himself.
The original setupwas dripping it, but now that he was up and about, he needed to offset the pain as much as possible. He knew that it was highly possible to overdose on morphine like this, but at this moment, he had other things to prioritize.
He was in an unknown place, seemingly powerless, and no one he knew was at his side, and he had no memories of how he got there. Suffice to say, something must have gone catastrophically wrong somewhere.
He leaned against the cabinet counter for several minutes until the effects started to set in. The pleasant numbing sensation filling his body doused the pain just enough that he could take more than a few steps without hunching over.
Once more, he ran a hand through his hair, feeling uncomfortable with how short it was.
Anger rose up in his heart again, but he did his best to squash it.
With confidence, he finally left the room, peeking out to see what was going on. It was just a normal hospital from first glance; there was a nurse pushing a cart going opposite of him, her back turned to him.
It had that familiar sterilized scent, and he didn’t…sense anything wrong. Though his senses were all fucked up right now.
Hesitantly, he stepped out, looking around.
He fixed his posture; despite the dull pain still being present, the drugs only numbed it a bit. And he made sure to project confidence as he walked.
He smiled as another nurse passed by him, though for a brief moment, she seemed to want to question him.
“Excuse me, ma’am, where’s the bathroom?” He quickly spoke up and ‘accidentally’ fumbled forward, making her ‘catch him.’
Wilhelm offered an apologetic smile, and the woman didn’t mention it.
As if distracted from whatever wandering thoughts the nurse had, she warmly pointed to a door about twenty feet away.
Wilhelm nodded in thanks and made sure to head inside.
He quickly locked the door behind him and clicked his tongue. He just now realized one flaw was that if someone were in his condition, they’d be placed on a floor of the hospital without much traffic or patients walking around.
He tossed the ID card he had just pickpocketed from the nurse on the counter next to the bathroom sink.
The nurse was probably going to check in with someone that she saw a patient walking around where they weren’t supposed to be.
Despite this, Wilhelm froze, because for the first time, he was now seeing himself in a mirror as he woke up.
“Why…?” He reached out and gently ran his fingers across the glass. “Why am I so young?” Disbelief flashed across his face.
Realization dawned on him why his hair was so short. He simply thought some asshole had cut it off, but that wasn’t the case. Frankly, now that he could see it and had a moment to think, even his voice was slightly off. And the feeling of vertigo was to be expected since he was now a little bit shorter than he was used to.
If his body weren’t a mess, if he wasn’t hopped up on drugs, someone of his training and astuteness would have picked up on it much quicker.
But now, the evidence was clear as day.
He was much younger than he should be.
In fact, he looked about how he did when he was in high school, maybe with his hair slightly longer than that, for some reason.
Something was seriously wrong here. Either someone was playing a joke on him, or someone had schemed against him without his knowledge.
He was determined to get to the bottom of this.
He peeked out of the bathroom quietly, saw no one, then moved with haste despite his body still shouting in protest. He didn’t head for what looked like the door out of the area; instead, he found one of the employee doors and used the key card to go inside.
At least, he thought it was a break room of some kind, but instead, it looked like a laundry room. Or rather, a place where they dispose of scrubs.
Either way, it was good for him. He quickly changed out of his patient clothing and put on some scrubs, fixing up his hair. He looked young still, but just old enough that someone wouldn’t immediately think he didn’t belong.
The only issue was that he was missing shoes, but there was nothing he could do about that. He grabbed a couple of hairnets that doctors wore during surgery and wrapped them around his feet, pulling on the elastic so they tightened.
At the very least, it wouldn’t look too strange from a distance.
He did notice something else: there seemed to be a trash disposal next to the clothing, and it was filled with discarded scalpels. He carefully grabbed a few and hid them in the pockets of his scrubs before finally leaving the room.
Wilhelm put on a casual smile, put his hands into his scrubs pockets, and just walked through the hospital like he owned the place.
It was always amazing to him what you could get away with if you looked like you belonged.
He nodded to a doctor or two and even a few nurses who barely even glanced his way.
In fact, he hadn’t even needed to say a word. He made his way to the lobby with plenty of people sitting around. He walked past the front desk, giving a polite wave to the person sitting there, who politely smiled back.
With that, he had walked right out the front doors.
The smell of fresh air was welcomed. For some reason, it felt like something he hadn’t experienced for a long time.
He glanced around and stepped out of the way of a passing older couple and only noticed out of the corner of his eye a newspaper laid on top of a trash can.
Wilhelm stared at it for a moment before picking it up and stiffened as his eyes gleaned the information. Particularly, his eyes were glued to the date mentioned.
It was because the date was about a month after he left his birth world. It was contextually important because the paper also mentioned the fact that he was currently in Kuoh.
The sound of a car door being slammed broke him from his stupor. Maybe it was instinct, maybe not, but he had all but thrown himself behind one of the stone pillars supporting the overhang above the hospital entrance.
They were large, large enough to hide a person of his size with ease.
He saw a bunch of well-dressed people quickly making their way inside the hospital.
He narrowed his eyes because he recognized quality suits when he saw them. Very good quality, but the brand wasn’t something he could pinpoint off the top of his head. Which in and of itself was strange for someone like him who is quite knowledgeable in that field.
Despite the anxiousness that suddenly appeared, he didn’t rush. He didn’t immediately break out into a sprint to get out of there. He walked with calm determination, heading towards the parking lot filled with cars.
However, before he could get very far, silently, a hand clasped him on the shoulder. A strong hand, one that wouldn’t let go no matter how he budged; he could tell that much just by the feel.
He glanced at one of the nearby cars; the reflection showed a well-dressed man behind him, similar to the other people he saw rushing into the hospital.
His eyes were drawn to something specific on his hand; it was a tattoo inscribed with magical script, demonic in origin.
“Hey kid, are you—”
Without hesitation, Wilhelm pulled one of the scalpels from his pocket and stabbed it into the hand on his shoulder. His other hand had grasped another scalpel, and he spun his body around as the man let out a sharp hiss of pain and confusion at the sudden stabbing.
The second scalpel of his was aimed right at his neck.
However, it didn’t even get close before a large fist connected with his face and knocked him out cold.
Wilhelm’s unconscious body fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
[Line Break]
Wilhelm woke up, his eyes fluttered, and he immediately recalled what just happened, nearly jumping out of his bed. He had the sense that he had been passed out for a while again, but he had no idea how long.
Strangely, he was in a lot less pain than before. In fact, he felt almost…good.
However, he didn’t have much time to dwell on that, because he wasn’t alone.
“Oh, what the fuck are you doing here?” He blurted out without hesitation.
Across from him was Rias Gremory, his supposed aunt. And with her were a few members of her ‘peerage.’
They were taken aback by his bluntness but recovered quickly.
“You must be surprised, Takao.” Rias smiled wryly. “Sorry about what happened; there were some misunderstandings.”
“...what?” Wilhelm furrowed his brow in confusion. “Seriously, why the hell are you here? Why am I here? What’s going on?”
Rias took a deep breath. “I know this all must be confusing to you, so I’ll just be blunt and rip the bandaid off, okay? You were stabbed by someone bad….” She bit her lips. “That needs some explaining. Please don’t freak out, okay?”
“What are you g—”
Behind Rias, two wings sprang out. “I’m a Devil.” She introduced herself. “We all are. You were almost killed—no, you were killed by an exorcist, so I had to do something drastic to save you.”
Wilhelm had a lot of questions, mostly because she was talking to him like he was an utter stranger, like they had never met before.
She was talking to him like he didn’t know what a Devil was.
However, he latched onto one piece of information above all else. “What do you mean you had to do something drastic to save me?” He asked in confusion.
Rias held up something between her fingers, and Wilhelm felt a strange foreboding rise up in his chest.
“You’re taking this much better than expected.” She let out a hollow laugh. “This is an Evil Piece. It lets us Devils turn other species into Devils, even the recently deceased can be revived with it. You were dead; it was the only option I had at the time. You’re now the newest member of my Peerage – my Bishop.”
There was a moment of silence.
"....yeah, fuck off." Wilhelm answered back.
[Line break]
A/N
So, to put a timeline out for people who caught on. Imagine this: first chapter, Wilhelm gets stabbed by the exorcist. Instead of his adventure starting, he wakes up a month later in the hospital.
Obviously, some things are not what they seem.
As for what looks like inconsistencies, like the fact that he’s now a full devil and a bishop yet had no ‘magic,’ that’ll be explained next chapter.
Comments
George Wright
What manner of trickery fuckery is at hand? :D
striker James
That sounds like and interesting retelling or rewrite or 2.0
Nick Wen
I think he meant that this is an alternative take on the “canon” timeline which is the main story we’ve been following for years at this point
Green223
He just should straight up leave when he hears that
Logan Hanna
"Has no bearing on the main story" I think we have different definitions of canon but I'll keep reading to see where it goes
