Intense cyan light illuminates the wide base corridor, reflecting off the crystallized white floors connected to the countless entryways into other rooms well furnished with visible rugs, tables, and sofas. The light seems to shine from the direction of the corridor’s end, where the extensive apertures of the nearby lobby is.

Judging by the warmth of the light, it appears that the day is nearing conclusion upon this side of the world, momentarily overpowering the fair white light that the corridor is still emitting albeit unnoticeably so.

In silent footsteps, the man in the leather jacket walks down the hallway, his body filtered through the cyan light caught on his back, piercing through his white locks. He has a casually serious expression, for his natural face has a stern toughness that may present itself as unfriendly, although in truth it is the face made without any dominating emotions.

His hands remain pocketed in his jacket, concealed while he walks with bouncing locks, his blue eyes fixed on one of the entryways on his trail. He lifts his head up upon nearing the opening, seeming to be the only one in the area as at first there are no other sounds.

Reaching the opening he sought for, the man steps through the arched aperture, walking into the next room and departing from the connecting hall.

Inside the entered space, the man faces the long hovering black crystallic tabletop in the center of the dining room, where above the long table is a long golden chandelier that provides light for the room with elegance. Along the wall is a screen that displays the scene outside, the green trees and evening sky where the cyan supersun is noticeably setting, and below the screen are a few plants in pots, all of which have wide green leaves although with unique colors of yellow, pink, and green as though they were dyed yet appeared so natural.

However, at the long black table are already three hovering chairs, two on the right side and one on the left. On the right side sits the girl dressed in the oversized cupcake hoodie, and beside her is the old man in the brown overcoat. Across from the girl sits the woman in the black blazer, and in front of each of them is a white plate next to a cup filled with crystal clear water. Beside the cup in front of the old man however is a flask with a purple liquid visible through the transparent casing, which only fills the flask half way while his cup is filled to the brim, untouched.

On all of the plates are exquisitely crafted seafood boils with visibly well cooked mussels, calamari, crabs, and shrimp among other accompanying ingredients such as bits of corn, all reflective under the chandelier light. Each of them have varying volumes, with the old man’s nearly empty, explainable by the forks in each of the three’s hands which they use to grab at mussels and shrimp while knives and spoons reside beside the plate on the other side from the cup.

The old man places his fork on the edge of his plate before reaching for a brown ladle on a long oval black pan with more of the same boil in the center of the table, providing surplus food for the three as they seem to be enjoying dinner already. After grabbing the ladle, he begins scooping up more boil before bringing it to his own plate and adding more food for himself with visible drool coming off the side of his mouth.

Noticing the drool, the girl in the hoodie faces the old man before berating, “Ekitai, isn’t this your fourth batch?”

After filling his plate again, the old man places the ladle back on the pan as he glances at the girl, to which he implores, “So what?”

Giggles come from the woman in the black blazer before she covers it up with her hand. She then notes in a humored voice, “So he must like it then. I see no problem with that.”

A heartbeat is skipped as the man in the leather jacket’s eyes shoot wide open in terror, realizing that the group wasn’t working but rather straight where he was heading for. He gulps as his heart begins racing, overtaking the sound of their distant chatter as he struggles to maintain himself in this horrific incident.

With silent steps, the man slides his right foot backwards, and then carries his left foot with it. He lowers his body to further cement his silence, and cautiously begins to creep for the exit with a tense expression, his teeth clenched. Every movement is precise and slow, making sure not to give away his position in this critical task.

He slowly pivots his body towards the exit upon nearing it, and he drags his right past through the opening, only one motion away from escape. His heart continues to race nevertheless, but survival is right in front of him, and all he has to do left is to claim it.

Right ass the silver shoe slides back into the hallway, a familiar mature female voice calls out, “Oh hey Meditat, haven’t seen you today!”

Failure.

Sliding his shoe back into the dining room and standing up straight, the man stares at escape longingly while contorting his excruciating expression into one of calm, trying to suppress his agony helped by taking in a deep breath through his opening mouth.

After straightening his posture, the man swallows his spit, and right on the verge of freedom, he has no option but to turn around and face his shackles.

Facing the three, who all have their faces turned to them with pleasant smiles, all the man can do is nod his head awkwardly, still silent.

Dana raises her hand and curls her fingers towards herself, making an inviting gesture while summoning, “Come on, we still have food! Ekitai hasn’t taken it all!”

Standing still, the man just glares while hearing Ekitai’s retort, “Okay wait now, I feel like you guys are exaggerating the amount I took,” knowing now his fate was binded in chains held in her hands which she could use to strangle him if she chose, which he knew she would do without hesitation.

He sighs softly, and in desperate clinging of the hope that he could walk through liberty’s gates, he explains in an innocent and unassuming tone, “Sorry, I’m not hungry.”

“That’s fine, just come sit with us,” fires the words of the guest, causing the host’s eye to twitch in a sting.

Eternal failure.

Those chains yanked, the man’s throat was squeezed, forcing him into one direction if he hoped to not suffocate and perish. It was a cruel world to live in, one where every minor mistake could be the undoing of decades of life and survival. A world that prioritizes not success but failure, as success is nothing more than the bare minimum that is required to continuously acquire while a single instance of failure could obliterate all the good done.

That’s this world, a tyrannical slaver, a sadistic torturer, a monster preying on the misery of others, watching them squander up fantastical dreams and hopes, letting them fatten themselves up with anticipation so when the time is right they could be cooked alive and fed not to fill an appetite but simply to savor its taste.

Shamefully in a dreadful sense of defeat, the man hauls his legs down the dining room, his eyes dreary and soulless. His head hangs low, watching his life sink below the ground, leaving nothing but a husk of bones to fulfill such sick and macabre commands imposed on the one who stole not just his home but his body too.

Continuing down the table, the man walks past the kitchen sunroom separated by the black tabletop, although now the room has a few white machines sitting on the counter, some of which resemble mixers and others resemble microscopes. Among the machines are also a few miscellaneous items including knives with red laser blades, white gloves made of what appears to be latex. There also appear to be food and ingredients left on the counters such as a transparent box of bright red strawberries albeit without the leaves, and a bottle transparent to show the milk inside.

Ahead of the mortified man sits Dana, who lowers her hand beside herself across from Ekitai, and under her hand flashes a light that materializes a fourth chair.

She pats the cushion twice, signaling to the man where to sit, before she then brings her arm to her side and gleefully catechizes, “Are you sure you don’t want the food? It’s good!”

Whereas there was a time where the man would have the power in himself to reject the seating and take his own with the distance he desired, time was not fair to him in many ways, and so rather than taking his own position he subserviently seats himself on the chair summoned by Dana, scooting forward before shaking his head.

He then holds his right hand up on the table and curls it around, to which a light flashes between his fingers before materializing his own transparent cup. Rather than it containing a similarly transparent liquid like water, it instead holds a contrasting black liquid that doesn’t even look consumable but rather something meant to be used for a machine.

With little freedom left in his hands, Meditat takes what he has and begins chugging it down, taking large gulps as large volumes of the liquid are depleted in seconds.

Across from him, Ekitai plops a mussel into his mouth, and before swallowing it properly, he observes intriguely, “I never understood why people like Royx, it doesn’t even have any flavoring, it just tastes like garbage.”

Already draining the entire cup in one take, Meditat places the cup back on the table, leaving it there before raising his gaze up at Ekitai.

He shakes his head before explaining in an exhausted voice, “People don’t drink it for the flavor, well besides for a few places. I know Suncreds technically sells it, but they dilute the intensity so much and then fill in all this fruit flavoring and sweeteners to the point where it isn’t Royx anymore, it’s just a worse smoothie. Anyways, you’re one to talk about drinking.”

At first Ekitai glances with a raised eyebrow, perplexed by the final comment, and it takes him several seconds before any change in expression. When it does change, he becomes noticeably defensive with slanted eyebrows, and grabs his flask before waving it in the air.

Kokei and Dana peer at Ekitai in intrigue to watch him passionately contend, “Hey now, this is art, it’s not some manufactured C-S made by corporate degenerates to perpetuate an addictive cycle! This is handmade and creatively engineered, because only I give myself addictions!”

“That’s not something to be proud of,” speedily murmurs Meditat under his breath before the empty him vanishes, and in its place another cup appears, already filled to the brim with the same black liquid as he seemed to be reaching for seconds.

He then reaches for the second cup, only for it to be suddenly swept away by the one next to him, to which his eyes widen and he faces the robber.

Next to Meditat, Dana grips the cup of Royx with an angry pout before then placing it beside her and reprimanding, “Hey, you’re going to give yourself a stroke if you drink so much at once!”

Watching another right snatched from his hands, Meditat sighs in despondency and hangs his head down. He drops his hand on the black table, not even trying to grab for it again either from understanding of how the events would inevitably play out, or simple fatigue.

After devouring a small shrimp, Kokei lowers her fork and glances at Meditat with a bright, innocent smile. She then cheerfully substantiates, “Well, doesn’t he have like, an invincible body? So he should be able to consume anything and be fine, so I don’t know why it would be an issue!”

Both Dana and Meditat move their gazes onto her at once, and simultaneously they speak, Meditat querying, “Huh?” and Dana rejecting, “That’s a myth.”

Both Kokei and Meditat glance at Dana with equally perplexed expressions, and Ekitai faces her too in curiosity. All three of them watch Dana face Meditat before debunking, “It’s one of the many myths about you, I guess some people figure that you're genuinely invincible.”

Leaning against her seat and raising her eyebrow with visible skepticism, Kokei dubiously grills, “And how would you know for sure? You’re not him, hmph,” before pouting.

With a wide, gratifying smile, Dana gleefully and shamelessly reveals, “Oh, well whereas some people normally have frientraits of their friends, I have an entire multiplex database of Meditat’s organs’ compositions, DNA sequences, and deeply thorough spreadsheets of his natural body’s damage response procedures. Ooh, and I have entire separate file drives of detailed images and diagrams of hundreds of horribly gruesome injuries including but not limited to: broken arms, missing toes, gaping shoulder holes, and severed geni-,”

“Okay Dana, I think that’s enough,” interjects Meditat with a nervous expression and shaky words, his hand now all the sudden tightly gripping Dana’s wrist, desperately trying to stop her verbally and physically in hopes that she’d stop before she runs her mouth for another second.

“Kuh, that’s diamond all exists!” exclaims Ekitai enthusiastically–his flask back on the table–, seeming to have been excited after hearing Dana’s monologue rather than mortified like what the reaction should have been.

His gaze is planted on Meditat with shiny yellow eyes and a wide smile exposing his crooked and misshapen teeth, which puts a shiver on Meditat upon first notice.

“Woah, so he’s gone through all of that…so ghull!” Kokei avidly declared, also seeming to have been only more eager after hearing such morbid information presented with no discretions and filtration. Her pink irises spark with elation and reverence as though something about what was said was aspiring to her.

Backed up in a corner, Meditat wears a cramped face which glances at Ekitai, then Kokei, and finally to Dana, all of them gleaming blissfully after sharing the horrors of his dangerous past which was only glorified like a fantastic tale.

He then takes the opportunity of their shared innocence to snatch the cup of Royx away from Dana, bringing it back to himself which he then takes a drink from, gulping down half of the cup at once before then taking it off him, only slightly moderating himself yet still not hesitant to down more than what is healthy.

After placing the cup back on the table by his side, although now noticeably further from Dana, he glances at the window screen along the wall to see that the sky was now dark blue sky with vast darkened clouds covering much of the heavens’ ground, and along the horizon is a faint cyan line indicating that the supersun had already past. Night now is hastily approaching as fast as the light is fading, a long day of work gone by. He lets out a soft sigh after noting the passage of day, seeing that it was already coming to an end when he had truthfully gotten little productivity done himself.

Seconds of silent skygazing goes by until the voice of Kokei carries forward a change in topic, diverging from the rattling subjects of injury to beseech, “So Dana, could we maybe do something this weekend? We haven’t really gone out, I mean don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to do here, but I feel like it’d be fun to go exploring somewhere sometime. Maybe, I don’t know, we could visit Yalahime Park?”

Jumping into the new discussion, Ekitai tacks on eagerly, “Ooh, if you want a real adventure, we should go to Earth 88, I heard this new gang has been on the rise, I think they’re called ‘Reyes De Todos,’ we should totally go do a raid on one of their camps! It’d be super fun, I mean we never even got to raid any of the fortresses with Meditat here anyways, but now we could do something like that, just minus all the plae Exhuman fighting and stuff. But you know, it’ll still be something.”

A displeased sigh sheds before Dana castigates shunfully, “Ekitai, the point of those missions was not for fun, Meditat was trying to dismantle an armed civil conflict.”

“Yeah, and we only got to join at the end!” cavils Ekitai in a childish tone, compressing the entire mission that spanned over multiple years of toils and hardships into the simple concept of ‘fun.’

“And that’s why you’re not a hero, Ekitai! Heroes have their moral compasses, they fight for freedom, justice, and the Superversal way! You just fight random people you know nothing about just for the sake of fighting,” chides Kokei in a snarky tone, as though using Meditat as an example against his own will to argue with Ekitai about morals in a conversation with a rather immoral premise of seeking fights purely for entertainment.

Kokei plunges her fork into one of the few remaining shrimp left and takes a small bite, taking off part of the shrimp before swallowing it down. She grabs her cup of water and takes a moderate sip to help wash down the bite before then placing it back down, and raising her head back up to Dana.

She then diverts back to the original topic, further enjoining sincerely, “But please, could we go somewhere? It would be so fun, and the pod fits all of us anyways! I mean, you don’t have work over the weekend right? Because if you do, then it’s totally fine and we can do it another time!”

Dana shakes her head before assuring, “No, it’s not that, don’t worry. I mean…I’m not sure,” before facing Meditat, who’s gulping down the remainder of his drink, and forwarding the request: “Do you think we could all go out somewhere this weekend? You’re not ‘busy’ are you?”

During his gulps, Meditat abruptly spits out a stream of Royx into the back of the cup after receiving the request, his eyes shot with a terrorized expression. He gulps before pulling the cup off his face and slamming it on the table, clearly struck by the question.

He faces Dana with a befuddled look before reproaching sternly, “What, we’re just going to be out and about for no reason and risk getting followed? Are you tired? Even though our major threat is out of the way, there still may be countless others in the shadows, and we need to be ready to keep our distance from them if they seek us out!”

“You mean fight them!” Ekitai attemptively corrects with zest and a fist slam on the table, anticipating adventure once again with a wide grin.

“Yeah, let’s cube with them and put them down! Show them not to mess with us!” supports Kokei in Ekitai’s mindless fantasies, also slamming her fist on the table albeit with a quieter knock, both sharing the same sole brain cell.

Dana instead lets out a gentle, understanding sigh, before facing Meditat and leaning forwards with a sincere gaze. She places her warm, fair hand next to his pale, wrinkled one, looking him in the eyes and assuring, “Medit, we’re not going to get ambushed, don’t worry. And even if we do, we can all protect ourselves, we’re not liabilities, trust me. Let’s live a little, take a vacation, we could all do with one.”

In silence, Meditat stares back at Dana with an apprehensive yet genuine gaze, seeming to acknowledge his own paranoia and recognize the barrier he’s putting up against the other three, restricting them from leaving the house which they asked for him to stay at under the idea that there would no longer be need to hide.

He lets out a soft sigh, the question still troubling him as a man who hid his face for so long, which he does again by lowering it, noticeably in deep contemplation that wouldn’t be concluded in an instant but rather takes time to evaluate over.

However, what was apparent was that he was evaluating the offer, rather than immediately veteoing and discarding the idea he let it sink in, and thus regardless of his final say, that was already a victory to some extent.

Dana smiles warmly in celebration of the victory, and she nods her head to him before facing the window screen, and noticing the dark sky outside while behind her Kokei consumes the final shrimp, emptying her plate. Her jaw descends in shock, blinking a few times before exclaiming, “Oh no, we should probably head to bed now, I didn’t even realize the time.”

Her chair hovers backwards a couple feet, giving her ample space to slide off of the chair. Standing up, she grabs her cup of water and begins chugging it while the chair behind her vanishes. After finishing her water so quickly, she places the cup on the table, and watches as both it and her empty plate dematerialize along with her utensils.

Both Kokei and Ekitai also push their chairs back and jump off the cushion, Kokei’s plate already empty as well, although Ekitai’s completely full of food as though it hadn’t been touched after the first few bites from the refill.

Both of their chairs vanish as Dana tilts her head and gives a shamefully judgemental glance at Ekitai after noticing his full plate right before it and Kokei’s also dematerialize along with the food on top as well as the cup and utensils beside.

Kokei begins to walk towards the exit to the main corridor as Ekitai uses both of his hands to pat his oddly nonexistent belly before somehow managing a loud, disturbing burp out of a widely open mouth. He snatches his flask which he then takes a swig from, gulping down the strange purple liquid until depleting the flask wholly.

After finishing the only drink he took from, he abruptly stuffs the empty flask in the inside pocket of his overcoat, still having a noticeable droll coming off his mouth. He then wipes his face, wiping the drool off with his coat’s sleeve, employing an innocent smile.

At last he follows Kokei out of the room, clearly satisfied with the meal even if he was the only one to not empty his plate.

Dana begins to head for the exit, but stops behind Meditat. She gives a glance to him with a warm smile, and then places her hand on his shoulder before gently rocking it forwards and backwards, trying to loosen him up after noticing him still with a tense expression.

She then calmly asks, “Are you going to get some rest tonight? I’m not trying to hurt you when I say the logs won’t change overnight, you should take this as an opportunity to get some well deserved time off. You’ve worked hard for it. Help yourself to some boil if you wish.”

Meditat, while keeping his head low facing away from Dana, remains still for a few seconds in thought, before finally quietly murmuring, “I’ll think about it, I’ll be up here for a bit longer,” in an honest tone, to which Dana gives a gentle smile.

Behind Meditat, Dana begins to walk once again, to which he pivots his shoulder to gaze up at her. He watches her approach Kokei and Ekitai by the end of the dining room, joining up with them to all walk together to their bedrooms upstairs.

All three of the group step out of the dining hall, leaving Meditat as the sole being inside, still on his chair and facing the exit with a contemplative expression, only his empty cup accompanying him. He watches them leave down the corridor, just sitting still, listening to their distant chatters while keeping distant.

No longer given a view of the group, Meditat glances instead back on the window screen, staring at the imminent night sky. He gazes for a few moments before instinctively grabbing his cup, only to hold it up and realize it was empty.

He then places it back on the table, and allows it to dematerialize. He continues to watch the sky alone, however there is no third cup materializing for him to take.

Instead, he just looks up to the dark sky in silence and solitude.

A calming sight to mark the end of the day.