Deep in the dark abyss of the void, I held Dantae in my arms, her broken, deformed figure caused tears to well up in my eyes.

“I'm so sorry,” I whispered in her ear as I brought her limp body close. “I promise that I’ll never let anything hurt you again.”

I examined her body up and down. Christian had her head shaved in an unprofessional manner, leaving tufts of hair and cuts all along her scalp.

X-shaped stitches were on the protrusions where her arms used to be. They were red and swollen, with clear liquid dripping from the skin that was barely held together, clearly irritated and potentially infected.

I looked down at her abdomen and frowned. My mind flashed back to Christian’s clones raping Vanessa, and rage began to mute my other emotions before I realized that Christian wasn’t in the void with us. We had escaped, at least for now. They still had four Walker Gene users in Alison, Lena, Maria, and Rob, although he probably wouldn’t do it willingly.

In fact, Rob would probably be locked up and tortured for what he did, and for what he had to suffer through next I was eternally grateful. Escaping my reverie, I once again looked at Dantae’s stomach and grimaced. Even if she was unconscious right now, I don’t even want to imagine her having to deal with a rape pregnancy.

Wiping away the waterworks, my face became stoic as I placed a shaky hand on Dantae’s forehead. “Vanessa Kumo, I hereby release you from your contract as my partner. From here on out, you are nothing but a weapon, until the day comes when I release you from your contract.”

Slowly the broken girl in my arms melted away into a familiar sword, and as the last trace of her faded, her final expression shown became one of comfort and relaxation.

I sighed and fiddled with the weapon in my hands. Now that I had solved the problem at hand, I needed to come up with a plan. First off I needed to find a way to heal Dantae, but… I would be a stranger in the next world we were going to, so I definitely needed the protection that she offered in her blade form.

Maybe I should try for a world with magic, or one with technology so advanced they can regrow limbs. Oh well, going to another world was like russian roulette. You never knew where you were going to until you opened up an entrance, and at that point the displacement of molecules would cause a suction that would force you into that world. I only prayed we would land in one with ambient photons to manipulate.

As I was about to open up a portal to whichever world was waiting, A loud screech pierced through the void and came to a halt in front of me. It was a familiar rotting avian, and perched atop it was a familiar girl.

“... Angelina.” The clone smirked to herself as she jumped off of Rotwing, who let out another piercing screech. Landing on one of the many pieces of floating debris, Angelina pointed a .50 caliber Desert Eagle at my chest.

“I’ve been ordered to eliminate you, you won’t escape from me, Leo Jones!” She shot at me, but none of them hit. Instead they were all sent into different dimensions as I opened up small rips in the void for her ammunition to fly through..

She frowned as a dark smile crept onto my face. She was an idiot to fight me here. I was the most proficient manipulator of the void in my world, how could she even hope to stand a chance against me where the entire dimension was my fuel?

I heard a screech coming from below me and jumped off the platform I was standing on as Rotwing burst through it, scattering even more debris into the already cluttered void.

Sighing, I willed a black hole next to the unfortunate beast and watched it writhe as it became a deformed version of itself, the black hole folding the very existence of the beast into nothingness.

Angelina grimaced, but she quickly turned that into a grin as more clones fell from the sky around her.

“Seize him!” Angelina darted forward and I gulped at the sight of twenty clones of Dantae rushing me. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and started to slash at the first one, when I felt myself get gripped from behind.

I turned towards what I thought was a clone, only to be greeted with the sight of Lena holding me.

My eyes widened in shock as she shouted, “Cover him girls!” She let go just as four clones held each of my arms and suppressed my powers.

Lena’s face contorted into a cruel and sadistic smile as they forced me to kneel down in front of her. “This is as far as you go, Leo.”

I grinned at how stereotypical she sounded, which prompted her to kick me in the gut. I would have bent over but the clones kept me from moving.

“Where’s Vanessa…? Oh, there she is! Lena turned to Morning Glory, which was stuck in the ground by it’s blade. “Not so tough now, are you bitch!? Even after we removed your arms you still fought us, but look at you now. In the end, all it took to get you to shut up about Leo was removing your vocal chords and drugging you to sleep. Ha!”

She kicked the blade before turning back to me and pointed a gun at my forehead. Lena opened her mouth to taunt me when Morning Glory glowed and the head of all twenty clones dissipated into the void, leaving me alone with Lena.

I swiftly kicked her in the gut and walked past her to collect my fiance that was stuck about ten feet away. “Thank you dear.”

I got no response back from our mental link, which worried me, but for now I needed to go. I opened a portal that revealed an open sky, leaving Lena to go back and receive her punishments for failing, all of which were far worse for her than dying by my hands.

---

Lena frowned, baring her teeth. “Now that it’s come to this-!” She tackled Leo through the open dimension and they both flew into the air. Leo looked down and noticed one large continent, and four smaller ones surrounding it. “Seriously!? We’re in the stratosphere!?” Leo complained and turned his attention to Lena, who was clutching her chest.

Leo tried using the void to create a portal beneath him, but could feel the photons resisting him. He grimaced at the cause of his obstruction: Lena, and raised his blade. Leo slashed at her in the air with Morning Glory, separating her arms from her body.

Leo’s eyes widened in surprise as a photon grenade revealed itself, the pin mocking him in Lena’s mouth. He hurriedly directed all the photons in his body into a shield, but that was when his world shook, and his consciousness faded.

---

A middle-aged woman looking through a telescope watched in horror as the peaceful sky she gazed at erupted into a cloud of smoke and flames. A silver object flew towards the Azure Continent, meanwhile a black plume that had separated from the explosion was heading straight towards her villa, or more specifically, Hokuto Lake, next to which her mansion was located.

She grimaced as she watched the collision, the lake bending under the pressure of the mystery object. She pointed her telescope towards the lake, and gasped as her eyes landed on a teenage boy with white hair, who had grievous wounds littering his body.

“A heaven-sent child!” she exclaimed as she rushed towards the lake. Inwardly cursing her lack of mobility, she grabbed an ornate walking cane from the corner of her room and hobbled out the door as quickly as she could.

“Grandma, I heard that explosion, are you alright!?” The woman looked at her beautiful granddaughter before immediately turning her head away and towards the manor’s entrance.

“G-grandma!?” The girl screamed after her grandmother but to no avail. Batting the door open with her cane, the woman hurried as fast as she could towards the former lake.

She hadn’t even bothered to use the trail, instead opting to go through the underbrush, leaving a trail of trampled grass in her wake.

A sharp pain rose from her bad knee, but who cared? Pain was but a fleeting thing, and neither she nor the six gods in heaven would be able to forgive her own inability to help this child survive and eventually recover. In her eyes, this was the chance of a lifetime.