Please disregard any alerts regarding intruders on the main level of the complex. A security drill is currently ongoing for main level security. No actual intruders are present. Any personnel disregarding this order will be severely punished.

General Security Notice, Menagerie Central

Several years ago…

"Hey -- Bruno, Serena? I've got a question for you guys."

Yakob del Sed grunted as he hurled his spear, the projectile flying across the training room and striking the target right in the center. The spear remained there for a moment, protruding from the wall, before reverting to its base clay and dripping sloppily down to the floor. Lilac Aether crackled out of it, escaping.

"What's the question, Yakob?" Serena asked sweetly through their collective mouth.

They'd been training for nearly an hour now, and so Bruno and Serena were both more active than usual. It was a rare occasion when all three of them were on hand to have a conversation.

Yakob activated his ability again, recorded clay pouring from his hands and forming a deadly-sharp chakram. "How come you guys don't really work together?"

He tossed the chakram like a spinning disk, chopping the head off an available training dummy. Cleaning automatics quickly gathered to collect the wreckage.

Bruno furrowed their brow. "We do work together. It's our whole deal. I handle defense and Serena handles offense."

"I like offense," Serena chirped. "It's fun!"

Yakob hummed skeptically, shaking his hands to clear the last few droplets of clay off. "I dunno… I feel like tagging in and out is a different thing from actually working together, you know?"

Bruno snorted. "Well, what is 'actually working together', then, smartass?"

"Well…" Yakob looked back over his shoulder. "Something like that, I guess."

A short distance away, Cott and several of his aspects were locked in combat against a training automatic. The thing has four arms ending with heavy pincers, capable of hitting any spot around it, and yet all of its opponents were going untouched.

At first glance, you'd be tempted to think the Cotts an unruly team -- Yakob could hear the overpowering sounds of Joy's childlike laughter, Bloodlust's mad cackling and Melancholy's sobbing -- but if you truly observed, you saw that they were perfectly in sync. Covering each other's weaknesses, bolstering each other's strengths.

Yakob said as much.

"Well, that's different," Bruno said -- a little sullenly. "We've just got the one body with one driver's seat. They've got plenty of bodies."

"Huh?" Yakob replied, bemused. "You do know more than one person can sit in a chair, right?"

Present Day…

The heat began to recede.

Bruno wheezed, his whole body screaming. Smoke rose up from his ruined form. His skin looked like he'd been locked up in a tanning bed for a few days straight, and when he breathed it felt like he was swallowing fire.

The former garden was now an utter wasteland, all vegetation reduced to ash and soot. A few flames still smoldered on the ground, but there was no more fuel for them, and they were going out one by one. The water from the sprinklers was finally able to reach the ground without evaporating, and Bruno writhed in agony as cold water rained down upon him.

In the center of the garden, Zeroth rose to his full height. It seemed that attack had taken a toll on him, too -- the arm he'd been channeling the heat through was charred up to his elbow. It didn't seem to be causing him any pain, though, as he looked down at the injured limb with a slightly surprised expression.

"I see…" he murmured, a sense of eloquence now in his voice. "I didn't defend myself enough. Next time… I need to put more Aether into the hand so it doesn't get damaged. I'll remember that… are you dead?"

That last question was addressed at Bruno's now-prone form, still resting in the corner.

Zeroth answered his own query. "I know you're not dead… I can hear your heartbeat. It's going fast enough… that you're alive and awake. So you can hear me… are you trying to play dead to trick me, so I come closer…? That won't work…"

Damnit. This monster had been an imbecile a few minutes ago, and now he was able to see through Bruno's tricks without any effort at all.

Still, they weren't through.

Serena screamed as she took over, leaping up into the air -- kicking off from the cracked glass wall -- and throwing her hands out to the sides as she flew towards Zeroth. Aether blasted out from her palms, pulling the colossal amounts of burnt refuse into the shape of an utterly gargantuan greatsword.

It dwarfed her body many times over. Flames smoldered within the blade. It was clearly heavy enough to crush a building. With a roar, Serena slammed it down towards Zeroth's head.

He caught it in one hand.

"You used this as your last attack… right?" Zeroth said, holding the sword up in the air. "That means it's your strongest… so if I can block it, there's nothing to be frightened of."

He squeezed, and the sword collapsed into its constituent materials. Burnt bone, charred bark, scorched stone… all of it fell to the ground.

Serena kicked off a piece of falling rubble, launching herself at Zeroth's midsection. If nothing else, she could use the disintegrating sword as a smokescreen. She wouldn't stop fighting until the second her heart stopped.

In that moment, she heard Zeroth speak once more.

"If I focus the heat from my hands further…" he said. "I should be able to do this… right?"

Another blast of heat struck her, more concentrated than all the previous attacks, sending her flying back across the room. Smoke rose from Serena's charred arm as she rolled to a halt, blood streaming from a wound on her head.

That heat… rather than send it out through his body into the surrounding environment, Zeroth had blasted it out from his palm into the air -- creating an attack not unlike Skipper's Heartbeat Shotgun. They'd only been fighting for -- at a generous estimate -- ten minutes. Surely he hadn't just come up with that on the spot.

Serena went to pick herself up, ignoring the pain, only to suddenly freeze. Zeroth was standing right next to her.

She hadn't seen him move. She hadn't heard him move. He'd just started moving -- and, in less than a second, had cleared the entire room.

"The heat works as propulsion too…" he explained -- and at the same time, he planted a foot down on Serena's injured hand to keep her in place. "If I send it out through my back and let it push me, I can move at extreme speeds… anyway, I think you're done. Bye."

And with that, he punched down towards Serena's head, strands of multi-coloured Aether coiling around his knuckles. One glance at an attack like that told you it was more than enough to shatter both skull and the ground beneath it.

Bruno took over, erecting as many force fields as he could in the space between his head and Zeroth's fist. The hand shattered each of them the instant they came into contact.

Time moved at a snail's pace, and Bruno's world became the fist. Breath abandoned his lungs. His blood turned cold. His senses were sharpened to their utmost, the world telling him everything about it in the last moments he had. He felt like he'd never been more aware of the fact that he existed.

There was only one certainty. One certainty to rebel against.

He was going to die.

She was going to die.

They were going to die.

Their arm reached out blindly, purple and violet Aether coursing around it.

Bruno's glove finally fell apart as he formed another forcefield --

-- and the tatters of fabric scattered as Serena seized hold of that forcefield, crushing it into the shape of a longsword.

Invisible, light as air… and as thin and sharp as a blade could possibly be.

With a mere swipe of their arm, Serena sliced off the fist that was heading towards them. The speed and precision of the attack was such that the enemy's Aether defenses had absolutely no effect. The cut was clean. The severed arm fell heavy to the ground.

Zeroth immediately moved to avoid a second strike. He snatched his limb off the ground and jumped back to his original position, eyes narrowed warily at the person before him.

His eyes flicked down to his bleeding stump. "Hey, stop…" he muttered -- and the bleeding immediately ceased. Then, his gaze returned to his enemy. "What did you do?"

He needn't have worried about being hit by the sword again. It had been fragile enough that it had shattered after a single slash. But then again… Bruno could just make another forcefield, and Serena could just turn it into another sword.

They pointed a new invisible blade right at Zeroth.

"That wasn't our strongest," Bruno and Serena promised. "Come for us again, and we'll show you what that looks like."

Zeroth grunted as he pressed his severed limb against his stump, steam rising from the seam as flesh fused back together. A slow smile, eerily calm, spread across his lips.

"I see… you're like me, then," he whispered. "A composite being… yes, I see that now. That's why your voice kept changing… and your abilities, too. You've reached an equilibrium. I want to see it. Show me!"

Bruno and Serena created a second sword in their free hand, and brought their body low to the ground, ready to kick off and charge.

"Like we said," they growled. "All you need to do is come for us."

DEAFENED

The sounds of the air whistling past Dragan's ears, the footsteps of those chasing him, the fluttering of the scarf he was pursuing… all of it suddenly ceased. There wasn't even the ringing in the ears that you'd expect from such an instantaneous silence. His capacity to hear had been thoroughly robbed.

Still, Dragan couldn't waste time trying to get it back. If he did, he'd lose his target.

Dragan flew through the hallways of the complex, his bottom half recorded into Gemini World, in firm pursuit of Warm Cat. The young girl was pulling herself along with the fabric tentacles of her scarf, occasionally pausing to throw an object back at him. Doubtless she thought that would slow him down, but he'd just absorbed it into Gemini Shotgun every time.

PAIN

Dragan winced, biting back a scream as a sensation of white-hot agony lanced through him. Even as he pursued Warm Cat, he too was being pursued. The three Detectives of the Forgiveness Corps were chasing after him, the grizzled man at their head tapping away at his letter-tiles as he ran.

Each time he completed a word, it seemed it had a physical effect upon Dragan. Turning around and dealing with the Detective was out of the question, though: it would mean letting Warm Cat get away.

And if she got away, Dragan had no doubt that would mean he'd failed in this mission. She'd kill Muzazi, get out of here, and he'd never see her again.

BURN

Flames sprang up all across Dragan's body -- but just for a moment, as he vanished into Gemini World while leaving the fire behind. When he reappeared a moment later, still pursuing Warm Cat, he was only lightly singed.

No matter how much he chased Warm Cat, they didn't seem to be any closer to their destination. Was she trying to lose him first, then, before heading for her real objective?

If that was the case, there was only one victory condition here: catching this little brat and making her tell him what he wanted to know.

Dragan recorded more of his body into Gemini World to reduce his weight and increase his speed, like a starship throwing out cargo. By the time he was done, he was little more than a pair of eyes, a hand reaching out to his target, and the outer layer of a hollow upper torso.

Slowly but surely, Warm Cat grew larger in his vision, until --

BLINDED

-- everything went black.

He could not see, and he could not hear. The only sensation he could feel was the rush of wind against his skin, and the weight of his clothes against his body. It was like he'd suddenly been teleported to the bottom of the ocean.

For a moment, panic gripped him, but…

No. The only one who decides what happens to me is me.

He sent out an Aether ping, just far enough to encompass the hallway, and did it again and again, until he was pinging several times a second. He could feel the other Aether-users in his vicinity -- Warm Cat, her Aether split between herself and her scarf, and the Detective, his Aether distributed between his many tiles.

Recording his now useless eyes as well, Dragan continued to reach out to the crimson Aether in front of him.

There's no getting away, he thought, almost feverishly. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you.

His hand gripped a thin leg.

I've got you!