Chronolock froze herself in time, intending to quickly take stock and determine where she would be most impactful.

She paused, her eyes going wide.

Something was wrong.

Something had changed.

This was…

Too easy.

Normally, freezing time was insanely difficult. She’d get a splitting headache the moment she activated it, which would be made significantly worse with each movement she’d make. That’s why she normally decided what she would do before activating her powers and then robotically executed on her prior decision. At most, she would freeze time and remain perfectly still, trying to glance around and recall as much of the scene as she could before the headaches disrupted her focus.

But now?

Now she barely had a minor pressure on her head as she froze time entirely. She walked in a daze towards Voidspeaker, reaching up at him.

What was going on?

It turns out, Chronolock’s ability was like a muscle, growing with use. The thing is though, since it was her mind doing the work and headaches were the primary side effect, it was hard for her to separate the physical pain from her mental expectations. So it turns out, she had been subconsciously holding herself back due to the memories of the pain, perceiving the side effects as worse than they actually were.

That had been blown out of the water with her latest feats.

Her feats in the Battle For Earth may have been due to external assistance from Xiong Huang and Councilwoman Dayal but it was still her body that performed them, greatly improving her powers. And perhaps equally importantly, shifting her subconscious’s expectation on what she could pull off.

And then she had stopped the entire timeline from resetting her. Again, with assistance but it was ultimately Chronolock’s power that had done it. Having pushed her powers to their true current limits and beyond, her subconscious had fully adjusted its expectations. She had learned now what she was capable of.

In other words, feats like stopping her own time that once would have wracked her with pain were now a walk in the park.

And there was another factor…

She had stopped herself from getting reset. Essentially, she had shifted herself outside of the normal timeline.

Which meant the normal timeline was no longer resisting her attempts to manipulate it, at least when regarding herself.

So she could manipulate her own time almost however she pleased.

She found she could take her time, walking through the frozen battlefield, searching for the ideal opportunity.

She found it.

Kiyosuke had teleported behind the Warped Warrior and was swinging his blade at his foe. The Warped Warrior’s sword was pointed in front of him, no doubt at Kiyosuke’s former position. She assumed that next the Warped Warrior would teleport again to evade Kiyosuke’s strike.

She placed her hands on Kiyosuke.

Then she expanded the range of her power while reducing its scope. Time resumed at a snail’s pace.

But Kiyosuke was now moving at the same speed as her.

And so his blade struck true before the Warped Warrior could escape, cutting the cyborg’s metal implants. The cyborg fell to the ground, parts sparking, unable to move due to the disruptions, its power core shutting down from the damage.

Kiyosuke’s eyes widened as time returned to normal. But then he noticed Chronolock touching his arm. He nodded at her and then flickered away, going to join his mother and brother’s battle.

Chronolock grinned.

Oh, she would have fun with this.

Kiyosuke ran forward. Countless phantom clones appeared as Bin and Kiyoatsu fought. Kiyosuke frowned.

He had developed new techniques, took the secrets of the clan in a new direction. But that was because he was not fully trained in the original methods. So to be honest, it would be hard for him to intervene here. He had not learned the Phantom Clone technique, nor did he know how to see through it.

Intervening haphazardly would just put himself and his mother at risk.

But then he realized, he didn’t need to see through the Phantom Clone technique to have an impact. He thought back to something Bob had said to him…

“The trick isn’t always knowing where people are or what they’re doing. The trick is knowing the person themselves. Then you can simply guess what they’re going to do in any given situation.”

He knew Kiyoatsu.

And he knew the NSLICE protocols, having sparred with Elise countless times.

He ran forward and slashed haphazardly at one of Kiyoatsu’s phantoms while shouting.

“NANA!”

Bin’s eyes widened in horror.

“KIYOSUKE!”

But she was too late. Kiyoatsu immediately appeared behind Kiyosuke, blade at the ready.

And Kiyosuke simply reached behind himself, activating the tesla stunner built into his prosthetic hand.

Lightning surged through Kiyoatsu, stunning him.

Nana didn’t miss that chance.

She fired a dart with a paper talisman tied to it. Seals leapt off the talisman and wrapped around Kiyoatsu.

Bin stood in shock. Kiyosuke looked over at her and smirked.

“No shinobi can resist going behind someone’s back. And basic NSLICE protocols wouldn’t miss that opening either. It was obvious what he was going to do.”

She opened her mouth at first, then closed it. Slowly, a proud smile formed on her face and she nodded once at him.

With that, the two shinobi flickered away, rejoining the wider battle…

A small red circle lit up on the wall of ice. Icy Falcon grunted as a jet of flame pierced through, barely managing to dodge to the side. The jet still grazed his shoulder though, leaving a burn.

The Captain Hot Devil NSLICE smashed through the wall, swinging a blazing fist towards Icy Falcon.

But Icy Rose leapt forward, covering her hand in ice and catching Captain Hot Devil’s fist.

“This time, I’m protecting you!”

She swung her other hand forward, flinging an icy gale forward and blowing Captain Hot Devil into the air. He spun around and shot flames from his feet, accelerating forward again towards Icy Rose. She held her hand up…

And Icy Falcon joined her.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t remember you. I guess we knew each other in your timeline? But I can see that I was important to you. So let’s do this together.”

Icy Rose’s eyes widened briefly before she smiled, silently nodding and turning her attention forward once more.

A huge blast of cold wind shot forward.

The cyborg Captain Hot Devil was trapped within a huge glacier of ice.

Mr. Dapper Tiger frowned. The battle seemed to be going against expectations. The NSLICE-A units were all but destroyed. They had more, of course, but that destructive cyclone was wiping them out as quickly as they were deployed. The Resistance necromancer had deployed some sort of undead dragon, no doubt a creation of her master’s, that was turning the tide in the war of the dead. And losing NSLICE-12NS, NSLICE-20NS, and NSLICE-425NS was a heavy toll. Especially 425NS. His teleportation powers had been most useful for the Concordat…

But the battle was not yet lost. He still stood, with the blade of Guan Yu in hand, and the power of the NSLICE Defender was not to be underestimated. Even if they had someone with similar powers, one human could not stand against the full might of the Concordat’s capital. They just needed to defeat this foe before him and the rest could be dealt with via the Ten Slaughters clone.

So he turned his attention back to Arvid.

He swung his glaive once more, knocking Arvid’s blade to the side. He swung his glaive down on top of the blade, stomping his foot on the tip, intending to hold the sword against the ground. He smirked as the Xiong Zhen copy appeared to Arvid’s side, about to thrust into the man.

“Got you.”

Arvid smirked back.

“No, we have you.”

Chronolock appeared to the side and stuck out her hand. The Xiong Zhen copy froze in place, vibrating about. Mr. Dapper Tiger’s eyes were just starting to widen when Arvid casually swung his sword up, launching the tiger man back into the air. He calmly stepped to the side, out of the way of Xiong Zhen’s blade.

Pink Star appeared, covered in a clone of Xiong Huang. She swung her fist into the Xiong Zhen copy’s stomach just as Chronolock released the time freeze.

Xiong Zhen went flying.

Chronolock vanished again, and then appeared in Xiong Zhen’s path.

This time with Wonder Knight by her side.

Wonder Knight pulled his fist back…

And slammed Xiong Zhen’s head into the ground with all his might.

Pink Star appeared in front of them once again. She pulled all the power of the Xiong Huang copy into her fist. Hers was not a perfect copy, but neither was her opponent’s, so the contest came down to two things.

The first factor was how much power could they output. Pink Star could not, in fact, personally match the entire energy output of the city, so the NSLICE Defender had the edge there. But not as much as one might expect. After all, Pink Star had also been present at the Battle for Earth and had helped resist all of time attempting to reset them. Her powers had also grown dramatically, in events her alternate never experienced.

The second factor was how accurate their copy was. And in this, Pink Star held an overwhelming advantage. The NSLICE Defender’s copy was based on a few video recordings and ancient records, the hints and clues the Concordat could gather on Xiong Zhen’s cultivation while maintaining the non-aggression pact. Hardly a firm foundation, but the NSLICE Defender didn’t have a stronger subject to copy, so it simply attempted to make up for lack of data with raw power.

Had he been alive, Xiong Zhen would have killed them all for the insult of such a terrible imitation.

Pink Star, on the other hand?

Pink Star had personally experienced Xiong Huang’s cultivation, both as a recipient in the Battle for Earth and as an opponent in the ILS’s battle with the immortal. And even better, since she had been specifically empowered by Xiong Huang’s cultivation before, she didn’t actually attempt to copy Xiong Huang herself. She just replicated the empowerment she had experienced, when she had wrapped Xiong Huang’s own cultivation around herself.

All in all, that was enough to make up the difference. Maybe Pink Star couldn’t match the overall power of the NSLICE Defender’s copy.

But she was close enough to hurt it.

She slammed her fist down into Xiong Zhen, and with it all the power in her Xiong Huang copy. A beam of pink light burst into the air. The floor itself shattered under the copy.

And Xiong Zhen started to fade into pink particles as he fell through the floor.

Mr. Dapper Tiger’s eyes went as wide as they could go.

The Ten Slaughters copy was the NSLICE Defender’s trump card. It had channeled a great portion of its power into it.

So it would need time to recharge before it could create another clone of that level.

Mr. Dapper Tiger glanced around the room.

All the NSLICE-A’s were sparking wrecks.

All the zombie animals on his side had faded away.

Saydaa had collapsed the entrances leading into the room. No more reinforcements were arriving.

The NSLICE-NS units were all destroyed or incapacitated.

He was alone.

And a whole group of angry supers now stood in front of him.

But then…

The whole building started to hum.

Mr. Dapper Tiger received a message and smiled.

“You’re too late! Peace will now reign eternal!”

The super’s eyes widened. Nana moved into action immediately, sticking special seals she had prepared for this possibility on everyone’s forehead. Saydaa and Voidspeaker formed barriers around the group. Pink Star made a clone of Roxanne and nodded at the original. Both Roxannes frowned and held their hands up…

And then a massive surge of yellow light passed through the room.

Roxanne and Pink Star screamed as fire shot through their minds. Even with all of Nana’s, Saydaa’s, and Voidspeaker’s help, they were now battling against a device intended to control the entire world by force that was but a few floors away. It took everything they had just to resist.

Beyond the Concordat’s HQ, the other Resistance fighters were not so fortunate.

The surge continued out through the city. Everywhere, Resistance fighters froze and stood up straight, their eyes losing focus as the light passed through them and yellow lightning arced around their heads.

The Necrosaurus and Admiral Faulkner frantically called into the comms, calling for Icy Falcon or Dr. Iwalani. But there was no response.

And then the surge passed through the command post…

And continued on across the world…