Just as Agil steps right behind the couch, Ekitai stops swiping on his handgun’s interface, and he instead turns around while on the ground, and points the barrel up while holding his weapon close to him. His thoughts overwrought, Ekitai pulls the trigger again, firing a blast of electrified turquoise liquid up at a steep angle.

Laying heavy fire, Agil dispenses his constant flurry of vibrational blasts without thought. However, in the reflection of his gray irises, the turquoise liquid rises up from above the couch, directly in the line of fire. As his vibrational bolts strike the liquid, it starts radiating an intense glow. For once, Agil’s eyes widen as the glowing liquid suddenly combusts midair right in his face.

An explosion erupts above the couch, spreading a dense turquoise cloud that quickly expands, consuming Agil and the couches. Agil coughs loudly, growling irritatedly from the successful retaliation, as he’s immediately blinded. He shakes his head and begins stepping to the side, unable to see his opponent.

Within the cloud, Ekitai gets up to his feet and runs towards the far couch, attempting to make more distance between him and his attacker. Now that he couldn’t be seen, he couldn’t be aimed at either, giving him a perfect getaway. He pants heavily as he tries to keep his path in mind, as he too couldn’t see ahead of himself.

Irritation becoming rage, Agil roars, lowering his arms and aiming his hands towards the ground. He shuts his eyes and tenses his hands, discerning that he was letting his enemy get away. In a distraught attempt to regain control, the air between his hands and the floor begins to vibrate intensely, creating a consistent, wide path of vibration that hums aggressively.

The aggressive vibrations cause tremors in the ground as the vibrations are fed into the floor, causing a small quake inside the house. While Ekitai rushes for the couch, the quake catches him, as he stumbles, dropping his handgun and collapsing on the floor.

The tremors, while coming from the main floor, are felt even from above, as inside the dark bedroom, the figurines rattle as the ground shakes. The hovering bed lightly sways as Kokei hides on it, seizing the large pillow in terror as her whole world was collapsing around her. Her face partly sunken into the pillow, she shivers both from the cold and the trepidation. For what seemed like eternity, all she could hear were shouts, explosions, and what sounded like her house crumbling from tears beneath the earth.

While she can’t see it in that instant, it is painfully obvious to her that the floor below had become a royal mess, with likely broken furniture and potentially ruined walls. Everything she had built for so long was being undone around her, and all she could do was hide in her room, waiting for it all to end. The life she had slaved away for so long to make for herself was caving in on her, as people she didn’t know were ruining her house, using it as a playground to cause any mayhem they desired. All of her work. All of her sacrifices. All for nothing. In the end, what was the point of all the toils? In the end, what was the point of it all?

With the forest of her world in wild flames, its natural life being choked in the heavy smoke as her trees collapse, there was nowhere to escape to in the waking nightmare other than in the waters below, beneath the present. In this horrific moment of despair, Kokei could only dive into those waters, submerging herself deep down into the dark depths, away from the inferno raging on the surface.

Trying to drown out her current miseries, she submerges herself into the worlds of her past, sinking into an old memory from long ago, far from now.

Opening her eyes, Kokei found herself inside a large, nearly empty room, with a white tiled ceiling and dark wood floor. By the corner that she stood in front of was a wide, large window, and beside it was a gray wall, with there being a pillar bled into the wall bumped against the window. The right side of the opening was partially obstructed by brown blinds, folded to prevent absolute coverage.

Beyond the aperture was a dark sky, as though it’s night, with visible stars and nebulae even, perfectly clear. As Kokei stood before the window, massive floating flames slowly moved past her, shrinking and growing calmly.

The view was surreal from what she remembered, as while it felt like she was in space, she knew she wasn’t, or at least not in the traditional sense. It was serene, as the sight put her mind at ease.

She wasn’t dressed in her signature cupcake hoodie however, but rather dressed in a formal gray blazer and blue miniskirt. Her hair was also significantly shorter, not even reaching the bottom of her neck, yet still maintained the unkempt presentation with messy bangs protruding from her sides.

She was infatuated with the window, her pink eyes sparkling as she watched the flames pass her. The stars reflected off her gaze as she stared in silence, and while she was indeed awestruck, her expression was calm, as the tranquility of her environment put her in a soft mood.

However, the silent gazing was interrupted by the voice of a woman with the youthful charm yet mature tone of a young adult, who softly observed from behind, “You understand now, don’t you?”

Kokei’s gaze didn’t move from the window, as neither did her body, for she didn’t appear taken aback by the presence of the voice. Instead, she continued to gaze out the window, softly acknowledging, “Yeah…more than I thought I ever would.”

The voice behind her released a soft sigh before explaining, “It can be overwhelming, I would know. I don’t expect you to be able to fully process everything for a while, but if I may, now that we’re on some similar wavelength, I’d like to offer some advice.”

Flames expanded and shrunk, reflected off Kokei’s eyes as she calmly answered, “Go ahead.”

After a few moments of silence, the voice continued, “Now that you at least have some understanding of both sides of the coin and you know all that you do, I just want to lay this down: Even with all the power over reality, none of it really matters if you can’t control your own life. It doesn’t matter what else you can or can’t do if the one thing you’re unable to do is lead where you go. What does your work matter if you can’t take pride in it, what do your experiences matter if you can’t share them with the people you care about, what power do you really have if you’re not free?”

As the voice spoke, an immense light poured through the window, a nearly blinding light that covered the window as if the flames had grown to such colossal size. The light flooded the room with vehemence that it felt like the room had been enveloped by the sun, overwhelming Kokei’s sights as they illuminate from the view.

Following her speech, the voice assured, “I should make this clear: I’m not saying all this to prepare you for a dreadful existence. On the contrary, I’m telling you this because, to be honest, I think that if you really tried hard enough, you could achieve all that. It’ll be a struggle, but knowing you, I know someday you’ll have a real life. Maybe reality can’t be perfect, but you…you can be free.”

Kokei’s eyes open.

Below the second floor at the entrance of the home is a titanic anomaly, as a great phosphoresce azureus sphere dominates the space, taking advantage of the high ceiling and open design of the interior. Furthermore, a cluster of cerulean strings protrude out of the sphere, sticking onto the ceilings, walls, and floors, although upon closer examination it appears the strings are constantly vanishing and reappearing in different pores of the sphere like a great plasma ball.

Also with greater clarity, the sphere doesn’t appear completely solid, but rather composed of curved streaks of light bouncing from inside with a disciplined formation that leads to a spherical impression. Within the sphere, the streaks of light trail behind the Tempest, whose body glides at extraordinary speed, with several blue cables projecting out of different parts of his body, as he soars in seemingly random directions.

Within the sphere flickers Victor’s body, who constantly reappears out of thin air before throwing a punch into the air at the direction the Tempest is at before vanishing and reappearing at that point, constantly missing his pummels.

While originally the Tempest was circling around the house in a relatively simple, repetitive path, his tactic made an abrupt redesign upon the hit that landed on him, as he instead appeared to constrict the total space he circled around, but instead now began moving expeditiously within that new space.

This globular path expands to a great portion of the front of the house nonetheless, covering a great amount of distance, albeit now in a more contained scope.

As the Tempest bounces from point to point within his generated sphere of luminance, his gaze trail behind, stalking Victor’s rapid appearances. Upon failure of taking the shot, a pair of epiphanies struck him, oddities that he either didn’t take notice of or hadn’t experienced prior.

The first observation he made was on the pattern of Victor’s movements, as while they appeared entirely random on how he traveled from one point in space to another due to the visibly discrete jumps, few instances struck the Tempest, such as the damaging of the chandelier, but more strikingly the way Victor escaped from the Tempest’s trap.

In that slimmer of a second, Victor had to make the bodily movement to face the Tempest head on, but not only that, he had to take exact aim on him. If he only required a general direction to move, he’d have done it sooner, but he made the full twirl to lock sight on his opponent, and moreso, he first threw his fist forward, initiating a punch before bolting out of harm’s way.

This dangerous act didn’t feel right, for it seemed more appropriate to dodge out of harm’s way first into a general direction of safety before attempting to strike, or at least moving the instant he knew the general position of his enemy. Instead, it’s as if he required his body to be in a position linear to his destination, and only once he was, could he displace himself.

As Victor continues to flash within the spheroid, it becomes obvious that he was moving in a straight line, reappearing exactly in front of his sightlines. While the movement between points seems discrete, his path appears linear. It explained why Victor’s movements, while difficult to read, appeared somewhat restrained in the way that he constantly kept missing his punches and striking other objects.

The linear movement allowed him to easily chase the Tempest when moving in a simple, long path, which caused the evasion to be so difficult as such linear leaps were adequate in threatening the Tempest’s movement on such a basic path. However, he’s adapted a more complex path that better harnesses his three dimensional arena and makes swift with curved movements that bounce back and forth. As a result, Victor has begun noticeably struggling to keep up, having gotten nowhere close to the Tempest ever since the change in track.

With such movements that take advantage of free three dimensional movement, such elementary motions such as linear jumps were inadequate, as while the Tempest maintained his speed and volatility, Victor continuously came short of reaching his target.

While making swift movements to stay out of arm’s reach, the Tempest revisits the exact moment that he was struck, when he had Victor locked in his sights, firing his shot before getting struck. For the second time, he took a shot, yet it appeared to vanish, as though being blocked or destroyed before reaching his intended target.

What intrigues him more however was a sensation he felt in that precise moment before getting struck, as in that moment when he took aim, he was in absolute concentration, completely honed in on his environment. While his strike failed, in such an attentive state, he felt a force on his chest, as though he could feel the punch right before it transpired. It was for a minute moment, but he felt an odd suctioning force on his body, both in the direction and place of the strike.

In fact, his engrossment allowed him to intricately feel the shape of the force, for it was circular but noticeably hollow, as it was exclusively the ring that he felt, as though there was an opening within it. The only other times he took a hit was at the premier of the engagement, when he wasn’t concentrating on such specific sensations, and beyond that while he felt odd whiffs on his body, they were quick and he mistook it as his own suit’s movements.

As an exception, when he attempted to make his shot midair, he wasn’t using any cables, and his movements were rather simple, leaving little stimulation from his own suit. The sensation also wasn’t the same whiff he felt before, as it was more pronounced, feeling as though it was tugging at him with gradual intensification before the arriving pound.

The sensation felt foreboding, like a preliminary signal that he was targeted. In fact, the more he contemplates it, those minor whiffs he felt likely were those signals, as they seemed to come right before Victor’s reappearance. If his movements were linear, there was no exact determination on how he selected the distance traveled, not until the revelation struck him.

Those whiffs were the traction that led to the strike, like the grapple hook for the cable to reel towards. Even at this very instant, the Tempest can feel the whiffs of air, and the moment after Victor reappears. Furthermore, Victor only vanished from the trap after he threw the punch, and vanished at the exact instant that his fist was facing the Tempest. When he reappeared in front of his target, he completed his punch, which had already been perfectly lined up.

In fact, every time he would make a leap, he’d first throw a punch, and reappear at the climax before leading the followthrough. It was as though he required his fist to face the direction of his destination in the middle of the throw in order to move, which caused many of his reappearance to give a chaotic impression such as punching the chandelier. If the sensation the Tempest felt was the grapple hook, the launcher that fired the cable was his fist, for that was what was triggering the jumps.

He wasn’t teleporting, nor was he exactly dashing, but instead he seemed to be projecting an odd tunnel of forceful air with his fist, and he appeared wherever that landed, whether it be the chandelier or the Tempest’s location, albeit with a lag that allowed the Tempest to evade the strikes.

In that very moment of being punched, the Tempest comprehended the nature of his opponent’s abilities. They weren’t free teleportations, but rather linear displacements following the aiming of his fist.

His opponent had become legible, and designing a tailored plan of retaliation was affordable.

From the nucleus of the flaming blue ball, a streak dashes out, with several cables protruding from its head. The streak soars down the house, leaving the globe to slowly begin dissipating from the absence of fuel. Soon after it begins racing, Victor begins appearing in pursuit, throwing punches before displacing forward.

Ahead of the streak, on the other side of the house, Rodrick kneels on the Artificer’s body, who lays on the ground while grunting through her electronic voice. However, between Rodrick’s knee and the Artificer’s abdomen sits a platform of solidified air, acting as a barrier that prevents his opponent from being able to get up.

In both of his hands, Rodrick wields the mace, raising it above his head with his target now locked to the ground, unable to retaliate. He smiles widely in celebration, ready to slam the mace down on her flat, golden face.

On the other side of the room, Ekitai crawls on the floor away from the dissipating turquoise cloud, groaning as he desperately tries to get away. Emerging from the cloud behind, Agil appears with part of his face convered in hair, slowly approaching the crawling senile man. He aims his right hand at Ekitai’s body before firing a burst of three vibrational bolts, causing Ekitai to stop and squeal in agony.

Put to rest, Agil reaches him before placing his right foot on Ekitai’s body, holding him down. His gray eyes stare with a vengeful glare between strands of hair as he gradually adds pressure to his foot, slowly crushing Ekitai’s brittle bones.

Ekitai groans in pain through gritted teeth, feeling the weight slowly crush him as he is powerless to retaliate. Realizing it now, he has never gotten into a battle with someone of this caliber or even of their kind, and there was never any hope for a different outcome.

Dana groans in exhaustion through her modulated voice, unable to push the air ceiling holding her down, unable to bring her arms up to stop the mace. She hadn’t been in a true combative situation in so long, having used her cybernetic assets as tools rather than weapons for long enough that let her get rusty.

Agil and Rodrick stand over their opponents, nearly at victory, ready to deliver the final blow. The gray room is battered with liquid stains on the carpet and indentations in the far walls. Some of the items that had been on the shelves now lay scattered on the floor, leaving a mess ultimately futile.

Rodrick has a wide grin as he begins to bring the mace down onto his enemy. As he executes his blow on the side of the room, a blurry streak soars towards the gray room from the dining room.

The blue streak is composed of exhaustion energy that exudes from the Tempest, who while facing forward, spins around to have his back facing the floor at an angle for him to look behind himself. He glides backwards down the dining hall, passing the grounded, battered chandelier, which lies behind the wooden tabletop and the batch of cupcakes sitting on the tray.

Without needing to glance, a flurry of cables project from the back of his right hand, all of them hooking onto individual cupcakes from the batch. Nearly all of the unconsumed cupcakes are linked to a cable, which is exactly straight as both the projector and the receiver are parallel.

Suddenly jerking his right arm, the cables yank the bundle of cupcakes towards him in a seemingly random move, causing many of the precisely crafted treats to fly in front of his blue gaze in a scattered crowd.

As the pink and white cupcakes fly in front of the Tempest’s face, a fist suddenly appears, penetrating one of them, causing crumbs of bread, particles of icing, and fragments of the book topping to jut out, exploding in front of the azureus gaze.

In front of him, the fist is connected to the extended left arm of Victor, who has reappeared to pummel his opponent. In the sudden epiphany however, Victor’s eyebrow raises in perplexity, realizing not only that he missed, but that he struck a strange obstruction.

Instinctively, Victor coils back his arm to throw a second punch while the two glide past the table, ripping his messy fist out of the cupcake. He opens his mouth to let out a rageful cry, throwing another punch forwards. His body once again flashes forward, albeit only by a slight distance, but just enough to hit his target.

Another burst of crumbs and icing explodes, as Victor’s next strike lands not on the masked face of his enemy, but rather on another cupcake separating the two. At that moment, his eyes expand wide, for he instantly realizes what has happened. As the two soar into the gray room, the revelation dawns on him that all of the small cupcakes were creating a thick barrier between him and the Tempest, as the numerous cupcakes were creating decoys that Victor’s punches would lead into. Even though they were small and entirely harmless, the cupcakes created a vast hall of obstacles that Victor would need to go through in order to finally have a clear shot at the Tempest.

However, as some of the cupcakes fly past them, Victor is able to lock gazes with the Tempest through a minute aperture between deserts. His astounded, fearful eyes stare into the calm, cerulean window into his combatant. As more cupcakes fly past them to allow a clearer image while Victor’s arm gradually recoils, he manages to glance at a wider image of the Tempest, only to find two fingers pointing right in the center of his view.

Fingers extended in the same handgun-resembling position, the hand jerks up, causing a flash of black light to erupt at the fingertips. Within the flash, a black bolt of energy soars through, humming as it journeys a short stroll to little more than a foot. The bolt enters the head of the intruder between his terrorized brown eyes, and as the bolt seeps into his skin, his entire body flashes black.

With a push of blue energy spinning the Tempest, he lands on his feet inside the gray room, skidding back a few feet before coming to a stop. At the same time, Victor’s body crashes flat on the carpet floor, skidding as well, although entirely limp.

Rodrick’s and Agil’s attention immediately pivots to the source of the sound with an uttered gasp, frozen, prompting Dana and Ekitai to face the same direction in puzzlement before their eyes also dilate. They all stare ahead at Victor’s body, which lies on the gray carpet.

Gazing at Victor’s face, all of them notice his eyes to be closed, denoting unconsciousness. The leader had fallen.

Immediately fixating on the Tempest, who stands straight and faces the others, Rodrick lets out a bellowed scream, “WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM-?!”

In that short moment of combustion, the Artificer’s face reconfigures with a wide barrel forming in the center of her face. The barrel flashes green, and a short blast of green energy fires out of her face, striking Rodrick. The sudden bedazzlement causes his solidified constructs to vanish as he stumbles backwards with a cry, freeing his opponent to stand up.

Rodrick shakes his head, with a rageful face, roaring, “YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR THAT!” while charging at the Artificer. Upon standing up, her right arm reconfigures into the cone-shaped blaster she used before, with the same grater design. At the same time, she jerks her left hand forwards, causing it to shatter into three fragments which fly in the general direction of him.

Two of the fragments fly next to Rodrick as the third flies past him from above before all three of them suddenly transform, expanding rapidly into golden humanoids partly resembling the Artificer’s body. The humanoids begin moving as though they were human, and the specters dash towards Rodrick from the sides and from behind.

Gasping in horror, Rodrick extends his arms forward, solidifying the air in front of him to create a wall between himself and the Artificer. He hastily moves his arms to his side to create more walls, hardening the air beside him to prevent the specters from his sides to reach him. In a desperate attempt to box himself in, he turns around to cover his back, to which his eyes dilate in shock.

In the short window of him putting up the other walls, the specter from the back has already reached Rodrick, throwing a punch which lands straight into the side of his head before he can fully turn around. The powerful hit throws his body forwards, disorienting him enough to cause all the walls around him to vanish. For in the moment directly following his comrade’s defeat, he unveiled his own weakness.

His body flies towards the Artificer unobstructed, his head straight into the barrel of her cannon. She fires a single black bolt, which strikes him square on the side of the head. His body flashes black similar to Victor’s before his expression loosens, and he falls unconscious before collapsing on the floor in front of her.

Now the last one standing, Agil moves his foot off of Ekitai, and he faces the Tempest and Artificer. He grits his teeth in realizing he was the lone wolf, summoning vibrational rings around both of his wrists. He tsks with a glare before stepping forward while more vibrational rings appear beyond his fists, summoning a barrage as though readying to fire them all at once.

“Why do I always have to do this myself,” he murmurs before raising both of his arms, his left one aimed at the Artificer and his right one aimed at the Tempest.

Before he fires, the same firing sound of Ekitai’s handgun bangs, and Agil’s gray eyes expand. His jaw drops as he turns around, only to find Ekitai on the floor, holding his handgun, which is aimed at Agil’s right knee. Agil’s full attention lower down to his knee, to which he finds a massive orange stain covering just below his kneecap.

In that instant, his right knee falls limp, but not only that, it wobbles in a rather crude manner as though the bones holding it up weren’t even solid, but rather a jelly-like substance. He stumbles backwards in immeasurable pain, only for his body to flash black before collapsing limp. As his body falls to the floor, the Tempest is revealed standing on the other side, his right arm forwards with his fingers pointing at where Agil once stood.

Agil’s body lies on the floor as his agonized expression loosens and he falls unconscious, the final attacker defeated.

The Tempest lets out a soft sigh before lowering his hands and approaching Ekitai. He stands before him before looking down, inquiring, “Do I want to know what that one does?”

Ekitai raises his head to look at the Tempest before softly smiling, retorting, “It’s one of the milder ones. Thanks.”

Dana softly sighs in relief behind the two, watching them communicate in a rather light manner after the stressful encounter. While there were many questions left in her mind, she first bathes in the serenity of safety.

While the Tempest stands in front of the bruised Ekitai, Dana immediately staggers backwards with a yelp, instinctively gripping her shoulder as though she had been shot. The Tempest immediately turns to face her in perplexed concern, watching her collapse to the floor. He then faces the direction of the entrance before instinctively aiming his hand towards it, ready to fire.

Behind him, a collection of trophies and other merchandise sitting on the shelf suddenly fly towards him as though being tugged by an invisible force, slamming into the back of his head at immense speed and causing him to stagger forwards before collapsing to the ground on his knees. He grunts in pain, gripping the floor and raising his head with a tsk.

In front of him, two men step in through the kitchen. One of them has a Southern American complexion, wearing a light gray hoodie and brown pants. The other appears Chinese, wearing a black track jacket with white stripes down the sleeves.

The Chinese man turns to Dana before aiming his hand at her and jerking it right, which causes her body to suddenly be thrown into Ekitai’s, as though holding onto her like a vacuum and ragdolling her across the room.

The Tempest growls in resentment, trying to push himself back up to his feet. The Southern American man however blows in his direction, suddenly causing him to stumble backwards as though getting shot by a blow dart in the shoulder, and he falls backwards. Catching his fall with his hands, he glares at the two, cursing himself for having let himself calm too quickly.

The two men stand before the three in the pile, with the vacuum man glancing at the other three bodies scattered around the room. He turns back to the Tempest before congratulating, “I see you took out most of our squad. It’s a shame, Victor was a fun guy and Agil was a bit off but he was cool to hang around with. Oh well, I guess all that matters is we eliminate you, and I guess we’ll get rid of your companions just to be sure that this isn’t some sort of Shield knockoff.”

The blowdart man takes a deep breath while staring straight at the Tempest’s head, as though ready to fire a far more intense shot that could potentially be fatal.