Below the cavern’s ceiling resides the impressively large urban colony, designed with distinct regions divided up with irregular lines from the residential blocks distinguished by many rows of long strands in grids that compose neighborhoods to the more abstractly shaped city zones marked by greater clumps of buildings more densely compact. All contained within the concrete bounds of the rocky walls, all below the titanic stalactite spikes aiming straight down, the colony takes the most it can with the limited space provided, stretching its regions to the very borders.

There is to an extent a diversity in shapes, perhaps not exactly between every single building but to their families and functionalities, from the log design of the residencies to the cubes of the warehouses, although it could be contended whether it was an intended product of creativity or a byproduct from a lack of standardization. While certain regions do have some semblance of organization such as the rather clean grid of cubic warehouses, others especially the central city regions lack any flow with many stacks of buildings lacking the same dimensions in such a way that its resultant are jagged buildings with bases smaller than what they’re meant to support, as while the blocks each retain a few shared core principles such as hard edges and rectangular prisms, they vary in scale.

Yet despite the diversity in shape, there is little to none to contrast the bleak brown dirt color that washes the whole colony, for the same shade of brown that builds the boundary cavern walls is the same shade that builds every single building in the colony, from the homes to the markets to the facilities. All of them are the same shade of brown: an ugly, filthy brown.

As a result, the colony despite taking unique approaches to its architectural style is still washed into a same-toned slosh, and rather than that slosh being of a refined pristine shade it is instead assigned to one that triggers repulsion.

That brown would hardly be visible to begin with would it not be for the white lights emitting from the center of the city which spreads ambiance throughout the cave, breathing some extent of life into the colony all the way from the center to the ends, although the life it breathes echoes fluorescence in its cold artificiality.

Still, that light is all there was to illuminate the cave for the countless many who wander up and down the streets of rock and dirt, whether it be the strands among the rim but predominantly the crowds in the inner sectors of the colony that being the city blocks.

Further central to the cave is the dense sector of population, innumerable locals men, women, and children who walk the streets dressed in similar attire of brownish gray rags which complements their grayed skin. Not a single one of them has apparent hair on their heads, for if their bald tops are not exposed, then their heads are covered in rags to hide it, a choice made by the majority population as though ashamed. There are families that walk hand in hand, lone teenagers roaming on their own, and elderly observing the city by the walls. Between the buildings that form the various walls that separated the aisles of the city are the alleyways occupied by dumpsters as well as other loitering locals dressed the same, though most of them were older from late teenagers to adults. Some of them lay their backs against the dumpsters restfully while others argue and wrestle against one another in angst, although they are largely ignored by the wider streets.

What isn’t ignored by those in the streets however, so much that they even swerve their paths to curl away from them, are a triplet of roamers dressed so divergent to them that just a glance proved their extraterrestrial nature. They walk side by side, the one on the left dressed in a broad brown overcoat with an exposed bald head, but also the one in the center fitted in a sleek black blazer with a head of rich amber bangs, although surpassed most by the one on the right attired in a comfortable white hoodie with thick, long pink hair that flows in the breeze.

Those three walk as repulsive magnets, pushing aside all the locals who clear up a surplus space even bunching by the edges just to assure distance from the three. They sneer and stare as the three walk up the streets before taking a turn to the right, causing the repulsion to shift, those along the right walls scattering away subtly but swiftly, not running outright but not particularly cloaking their increased speeds.

Nevertheless, the three make their way to one of the buildings along the street, and through the open doorway they make their entrance with calm and steady steps while those around them sigh in relief to their departure.

Through the chasm in the dirt composite wall –made in a combination of rocks and dirt mixed similarly to bricks and cement albeit with an opposite concentration– enters firstly the mature woman in the black blazer before being followed by the slender man in the brown overcoat and lastly the petite woman in the white hoodie.

Over their heads –that of which includes the one in the cap of amber bangs, the other bare and wrinkly, and the final in a long suit of pink hair– is the establishment which they have stepped into, a large room with dirt walls overlaid by shelves surrounding three aisles that run parallel to the entrance, all of the shelves being made of the same dirt material. On the far side of what is designed to be a store is another dirt block although shaped as a register just like the one from the restaurant, for behind that block is a man dressed in rags who is currently interacting with an elderly woman on the other side of the block, the head of a line of four other customers with the one behind being an adult man in front of another woman albeit a teenager, and lastly is a male albeit younger to be about ten years of age.

Beyond the line are also many other locals scattered amongst the aisles from the entrance to the line, some of them bending down to interact with the shelves, others just surveying their options with their hands free. Most of them are adults, although mixed in are teenagers and younger, yet there are discernibly no groups of people inside, no families or friends, for everyone procures solely.

Filling those aforementioned shelves are a diverse variety of products organized in sections among the various aisles all stored in the same uniform transparent jars, such as one that primarily houses jars of white pills and another with jars containing red powder. What draws attention the most efficiently due to its radiance however are the surplus jars of a familiarly toned teal substance, its luminescence overpowering any dim light that could be coming from outside thus casting its own hue throughout the store. The hue is so powerful in fact that it casts a hard shadow behind the three, the shadows of their figures embedded in the dirt of the floor, in the pit of this cave.

There was a vast abundance of jars specifically with the teal substance, as it covered the entire wall across as well as being scattered throughout the other outer shelves and aisles disorderly.

In the line on the other side of the store, the elderly woman as well as the younger boy hold a jar of the teal substance as the other man carries a jar of the white pills and the teenager handles a jar of a dark brown tar.

Faced yet again with another building to sweep out, Ekitai releases an exhausted, seemingly bitter sigh, somewhat matched with Kokei’s reluctant and frantic gaze, yet entirely juxtaposed by Dana’s sharpened glare which she carries along with her legs as she marches deeper into the store in her search.

After her advancement, concurrently Ekitai and Kokei exchange glances to one another, both of them sharing reluctance in their eyes yet Ekitai in a fatigued frustration with an attitudinal huff and Kokei in an apprehensive anxiety with a dreary whimper.

Both of them synchronously return their gazes forth into the store, their expressions remaining the same which they wear with another step forwards.

Another store, another sweep, the three make their way down the room, their sharply defined shadows following them on their journey, their steps crunching the rocks beneath the soles that intersect the physical body from the silhouette in the floor.

Kokei remains in the back with steady, cautious steps to let her examine her surroundings as meticulously as possible, a similar pace to Ekitai but given the opposite attitude as he instead strolls aimlessly about with his hands in his pockets in a childlike rebellion of chores, putting an act of opposition yet ultimately succumbing to obedience.

What further motivates him to keep forward is trailing Dana, who powers through the store, eagerly seeking out every crevice of the interior with bobs of her head and leans forth and back to scrape every detail she can. With such intentful haste, she garners the attention of a few shop dwellers, who cast cold and hostile glares at her, although they ultimately take no action but rather some of them begin to relocate to aisles distant.

All the way on the other end, the elderly woman and the shop employee nod heads before the elder then turns around and begins her way towards the exit on the other side, clutching the teal jar in both of her arms with the gravity of an offspring.

Pacing down the store hesitantly, Kokei glances around at the various shelves of products, nervous about the general shady atmosphere of the building she couldn’t so easily walk out of now. A building also heavily occupied only fuels more uncertainty as Kokei’s gaze leaps away from any of the locals around in fear of catching uncomfortable stares. Every step is careful, not one is made nonchalantly as she only takes an additional step when her threshold of safety is met by enough surveys from her position.

She glimpses at the many jars, with such a variety of products yet all stored in the same container, the jars themselves not particularly fascinating either as their transparent bodies make the accumulation of dust and grime very apparent, leading to an effect similar to fog.

She recoils and winces at the thought of consuming such substances in such unsanitary conditions, although the conditions themselves are truly the least of the repulsive factors in such a thought. She shakes her head and pushes forward nonetheless, just hoping for a speedy search and departure, speedy and safe.

Up ahead trails Ekitai, expressing displeasure on his face yet obliging to the activity regardless. That self awareness at a paradoxical action only further intensifies both ends, for the very fact of understanding his submission irritates him. Yet here he still is, walking onwards, following the hyper pseudo-leader straight into another dungeon, straight into only more trouble and mayhem.

As he walks down the aisle in between the shelves more intimately aligned together, he glances from side to side at the many substances illegal in the majority of the surface worlds, substances that being the vendor of could lead to devastating charges; even owning them to begin with is a risk despite all those who casually grab from the shelves with the same laxness to picking up groceries from a supermarket. While he is no stranger in the world of illegal practices, for that was so common that his own set of laws were the inverse of the proper, even to him there was something distinctly disturbing about the sale and trade being done in such a trivial execution as though it were the consensus that it wasn’t a crime at all. There was no thrill of delinquency, no rush of revolution, none of the passion that made this lifestyle such an exhilarating sport to play. It was just a world of criminals where crime was the normal, where crime was the proper.

It just wasn’t funny.

So glancing from the tars to the powders to the customers who grab large jars of them for simple purchase, his resentment towards the vexatious persistence of whom he has to now babysit gradually morphs into something else, something that transforms his bitter grit to a soft frown. And with that frown he faces forward and continues the search, passing the jars of vibrant teal along the way.

At the head of the extraterrestrial refugees marches Dana with a firm glare of determination, unwavering, even against a world that continued to push her back from her goal. She constantly sways her head to every angle like her neck was a worn ball pivot, her eyes remaining green to avoid further intimidation to the apprehensive locals, constricting her even more to only following a limited subset of visual capabilities. Her amber bangs sway with the intense swivels of her head too, tossing it around chaotically which only further blunders her vision, but all she does to combat such problems is to simply seek through her compact hairs to the best of her ability rather than taking true reactive measures.

She instead takes what she can to the maxima, making sure to inspect every edge of every shelf in her forward pace, just waiting for one of these glances to cast the image of Him, just waiting to finally be able to escape from this nightmare. She was trapped in a world that wasn’t her own yet filtered to be one that maroons her to her head, awarely alien to this environment and yet inspecting it so carefree as though it were her own home.

Fully analytical of her environment and yet equally negligent to the contextualization of her own surroundings, Dana just marches forwards, facing every direction but forwards, studying every detail but the elderly woman who walks straight into her which the collision of finally knocks the unstoppable ship off its course.

At first Dana stumbles backwards from the unexpected collision, but swiftly regains her footing and faces straight on at the cause of the crash with sharp green eyes; her arms reset to her side along with the rest of the shift to a formal, presentable stance although inconsiderate of the ruffling to her blazer.

She places her cold green gaze on the obstacle that had temporarily obstructed her, apathetically addressing: “Apologizes ma’am,-”

“- I’ll go to your righ-,” Dana begins to formulate as she gazes at the elderly woman in rags before her, clutching tightly to the jar with both hands after being struck, a blow that is not particularly strong as it lacked any true aggression yet given her age and build it still clearly shook her up.

Her focus however then zooms in specifically on the jar in the embrace of the senior, the jar filled to the brim with the vibrant teal substance, a substance that has been out on display around the entire store from the moment they had stepped in, and yet a substance she had not taken the time to interpret individually until this very shatter. She had been so tunnel visioned on the search for her friend that only now at this very moment did she truly realize exactly what was being stocked in this store, and what all of these customers were casually purchasing.

That revelation sparks a horrified face on Dana as she interrupts her own statement with a strong gasp and the bursting of wide, dreadful eyes between her amber bangs.

She freezes up in an instant, as against her conscious will she’s subjected to a slideshow of images in her own perspective inside the warehouse, where far ahead at the edge of the facility’s center was a crimson puddle below the hung corpse in front of the man in the azure and golden bomber.

More images flash in her mind from the same point of perspective, images of the gunslinger laid on the floor, whose head was beside his pistol, his head frozen in a terrified expression with both of his eye sockets emptied.

The presentation concludes with the vision of the cyborg’s crushed corpse sat up against the colossal racks that organized the warehouse into distinct aisles, her mouth wide open, apparent tear streaks on her face originating from her empty eye sockets, her arm severed from the sheer force of the execution.

All of those horrid images, all of them caused by a sequence of events that were now ingrained into history, a sequence of events propelled by a specific substance: that teal gel-like liquid stored inside the large jar carried by the innocent old woman. Not only was that variant something she had already seen the effects of, but just the general product itself had penetrated straight through Dana’s heart, and in that very moment her entire focus collapsed.

Upon the slideshow’s conclusion, Dana’s traumatized expression largely remains, but it is then mixed with a desperation that propels her body and arms forward as she abruptly begins beseeching: “Oh my, ma’am, please let me take that off your hands, you really should not be carrying such danger!”

Instinctively however the elder steps backwards, evading Dana’s clutches, and only further tightening her own on the jar.

Her own eyes then tighten into an aggressive glare, clinging to the jar as if it were her child before she reprimands, “Hell wrong with you?! This mine! Your hands get away!”

Far behind the senior, the employee after the counter who had just finished assisting the adult man –who now has the jar of white pills in one arm resting against his side– and was now moving to service the teenager carrying the brown tar raises his head up with a suspicious glance shot towards the quiet commotion.

From one tunnel straight into another, this one too grounded in personal guilt, Dana once more takes a questionable action in stepping towards the senior with her arms stretched out and imploring again, “Please, you don’t understand what it is that you’re holding! It doesn’t do any good, trust me, you shouldn’t have it, give it to me.”

In the distance behind Dana perks up the head of Ekitai with widened yellow eyes, anxious, and he begins to make his way towards her with greater speed.

More hostile the senior takes another step back with a tightening to her cling as she snarls at Dana as the teenager customer also turns around to view the growing altercation.

The senior, her glare blazing, then rebukes fiercely: “Know damn well what this is! Know what I am doing! Think you can come to me and say I dun know what I doing all this time?? Ego. Need this more than you could know. Leave me alone.”

Given a harsh retaliation, the most logical decision now would likely be to surrender and retreat, to understand the horrible conflict being brewed and to recognize that extinguishment would be the best course of action.

Yet in the peripherals of Dana’s gaze, she notices that on the far end of the store is the young boy who also holds a jar of the same teal liquid. Whereas this woman was in an age where separation from current trends could cause a gullibility that could lead her to being manipulated, what was magnitudes more troubling was a boy of such young, impressionable age planning to make the purchase of an item that would have permanent effects on his entire life, effects he might’ve not known about.

So despite the very comprehensible solution to this growing conflict, Dana instead chooses the second route, a route that she marches towards past the senior who strafes to protect her jar with a scowl as far behind Ekitai descends into a dreadful expression, picking up the pace upon recognizing the storm approaching and attempting to chase it.

Now garnering more and more of the shop’s attention, for even the adult with the pills has paused to watch the intruder, all of the customers by the back end of the shop stand still staring at Dana with suspicious scorns, their scowls visible to her as she marches forth with footsteps that kick the rocks by her feet.

The young boy at the line stands innocently at first, yet on the side of his uncovered bald head facing the approacher, a spot of his wrinkled gray skin stretches out with a disturbingly slimy sound to reveal a white layer beneath similar to a sclera in an aperture shaped as an eye, and in the center of the eye is a black iris with a white pupil which stares straight forward before immediately then closing and sealing followed by the turning of the young boy’s head towards the sensed danger.

The boy, now facing the approacher, shows a troubled face and stumbles backwards in fear, clutching his jar more tightly defensively.

In front of the boy and surrounded by the judgemental glaring customers, Dana reaches out for the young child with the jar, and even with the sweet motherly tone her desperation breaches through her imploration: “Dear, how old are you?? Don’t you know what’s in your hands?? You can’t have that, that’s so dangerous for me, please don’t take it! You have no idea what it’ll do to you, here, where are your parents-?”

Perturbed in a frozen state of loss, the boy just stares up into Dana through his eyes also with black irises and white pupils, his mouth hanging open, his arms tight around the jar. In a childlike guilty voice he then softly whispers, “No have mommy and daddy…-.”

“Can you stop harming my custos?” suddenly interjects the employee behind the counter past Dana’s shoulders, to which she raises her gaze up to meet him upon the immediately antagonizing entrance.

In front of all the pugnacious glares from the surrounding customers, Dana still despite all of the hints fed to her on a silver spoon pursues onward, taking a step forward and pointing her hand at the disoriented boy, making the worst decision to berate fervently, “Excuse me, I am harming your customers? And what are you doing? Don’t you realize what you’re selling here?? These drugs, they’re not good for anyone, but especially not children of developing minds! Don’t you realize that just a single injection can trigger a whole episode?? You can’t let him have this, please, this isn’t right, nobody should be buying this, nobody should be selling this, nobody should be making this!!”

A few aisles down, Ekitai gasps for air, exhausted from all the physical exertion throughout the day. He then raises his head up after a few heavy breaths for air before his eyes widen even more at the advancing scene, and he continues his jog.

Now his whole business being contended against, a strike that the employee shows his anger at with a fierce glare, the man becomes visibly agitated, entirely putting focus on the intrusive woman and ferociously feuding, “Never saw you before. Can tell you not from here. Made it easy for me showing off so fancy. Had my rounds with aliens but never one to act this mighty. Got people coming in my home taking what they want. Never got people coming in my home acting they better. Know full well what I selling. Giving what the people need. Helping them survive out here. Not seeing you be of any help. Course you dun give none anyway. Body been tossed the rounds but never my expertise. All they need this to get by but you wun get it. Now I gon ask you once. Get out my shop.”

On the opposite side of the counter, facing straight at the pronounced owner who glares straight at her, standing beside the anxious child who begins to back away, Dana puts all her focus now on the owner with heavy breathing as though she was on the verge of hyperventilation, breaking down surrounded by all the eyes of the customers from every angle.

She takes a few rapid, hefty breaths before gulping to catch herself before then recklessly pursuing so desperately that tears swell in her green eyes and her voice only further raises, “I know exactly what you’re selling, more than you could know, and more than anyone I know just how dangerous this is! Please, these shouldn’t be given to anyone ever, they should’ve never been made where they started and they should’ve never spread as far as they did, but please listen to me, you can’t let these innocents have this-,”

However she immediately silences upon the raising of a short copper-tinted barrel aimed directly at her head which sounds a whir, causing her eyes to expand more yet now rather than desperation it was in sudden terror.

Behind the counter stands the shop’s owner, holding a small firearm designed like a revolver with a short barrel and a handguard that arcs from the bottom of the trigger’s handle to the barrel’s aperture. The cylinder oddly spins continuously like a motor, emitting a gentle hum, for at first its rotation is slow and steady however it accelerates until its movements are indistinguishable from vibration.

Rage filling his blazing eyes, the owner growls before rebuking, “Not hear what I said?! Dun care who are nor what know. Guess where you from you dun need this. This not where you from. They come to this shop to get the only tools we got. They either got this or none. Not gonna ask why this kid needs that but know his life depends on it. Might be a drug to you. But it our best tool to us. It the only tool we got. A tool people like you left behind. Litter from your raids. Now you come back to try snatching what lil we got left. Pah deserved a better world. Building his shop best I can. Dun care if I gotta die to protect it.”

Poetically at that very moment, another barrel with copper-like material is lifted, this one aimed at the owner, and rather than being a stubby copper barrel it instead was a much wider, box-shaped silver barrel wrapped with copper coils in a makeshift manner.

Immediately upon the aim, the owner’s rageful expression dilates into cautious anger as his eyes divert to the side where the barrel originates from, sensing the retaliation.

Still frozen in fear, Dana remains in place with wide, terrorized green eyes below ruffled amber bangs, holding in her breath now being at gunpoint.

However, upon noticing the shift in attention, curiosity seeps into her too, and with meticulous caution she slowly moves her irises to her right and very slowly pivots her head to follow the owner’s sight, wanting to know what had taken his attention without carelessly triggering him.

With steady turns, Dana manages to move her gaze to the side where she is then able to set her eyes on the senile slender man accompanying her, who glares forth with sharp yellow eyes, facing the target whom he aims at with his handgun grasped tightly, thumb on the weapon’s hammer and finger coiled around the trigger, his overcoat parted to partially expose his purple-stained black jumpsuit due to the quick acquisition within the interior. Upon the epiphany of the conflict’s intense escalation, her jaw slowly descends yet no words escape her.

Right behind the gunslinger, slightly to his side, stands his friend whose mouth hangs open in shock, her pink eyes shimmering upon the sudden decision made, for they had reached the most volatile climax. All behind the three stands the many customers who now watch with petrified stares, as while at first they were not too fearful of the rantful outsider, the armed alien put them all into dread, frozen in place, including the teenage girl holding the brown tar behind the scene.

Among the horrified customers is the young boy, standing right next to the armed alien, his black eyes wide in terror at the sight he could not move away from, locked in the worst position only inches in proximity from the deadly device.

He clings tightly to his teal jar, hugging it almost as if it were a doll, his mouth gaping open speechless, his eyes teary yet unable to cry. What had begun as a normal errand was now potentially his last, an errand ironically meant to help keep him protected.

On one side of the counter stands the owner with the revolver, aiming at the other side of the counter to the advisor and the coward who stand next to the gunslinger aiming back at the owner, both of them locked in yet another shootout, both of them first silent as is the whole store for not a single being makes a sound.

Holding the gun up, although shakily as his bony arms are unable to wield the revolver straight, the owner tsks in irritation before surmising, “There them true colors. Always out to take everything from you. Thinking they own the universe. No is no answer. They take it and dun care how many bodies they gotteh drop to getteh. Is never enough. Want it for yourselves? Is that it? Least not gonna go down without a fight.”

Silently the gunslinger just stares back without response, his lips sealed, his expression unchanged, his glare stern, his arm perfectly steady with not a single waver. His bald head reflects the teal luminescence all around the shop, yet his irises have their own yellow glint.

While the gunslinger himself makes no sound, the advisor beside him whilst keeping her arms still so as to not warrant any counters pleads in a whisper, “Please…Ekitai…put it down. I’m sorry…this was my fault…let’s leave now before this gets any worse.”

However even with the request by the very one to lead them into this situation, the gunslinger remains still, his glare unmoved as is his aim. He just holds his position, although while the advisor and coward do out of fear of being struck, he does it in preparation to strike.

Both the owner and the gunslinger stand still with their guns in hand aiming at their own different targets, waiting for the other to move. The gunslinger’s arm remains steady and calm, whereas the owner’s shakes and shivers, his face visibly becoming more and more distraught, the eerie freeze putting him and the customers in more terror at this armed intruder.

Such dread becomes so intoxicating, and in the frozen standoff, the owner abruptly moves his aim to the gunslinger in a desperate act of retaliation right as a distinctively familiar boom follows a bright flash from the gunslinger’s firing barrel.

Immediately the young boy shuts his eyes tightly and turns his head away from the horrible sight, clutching more tightly to his jar, goosebumps washing all over his gray body.

Instantly Dana and Kokei’s mouths widen in trauma as do all of the customers behind them, Dana blurting out: “NO, EKITAI-,” and grabs onto the gunslinger’s arm instinctively, as all of the customers around the store stumble back in terror to what seems to be a tragedy, some of them even dropping the jars on the floor.

Moments pass as the customers struggle to stabilize themselves, and Kokei’s mouth oddly contracts as though in relief. Muttering and whispering rises up in the crowds of customers, quickly glimpsing at one another, still shaken up, although they do not seem truly traumatized in the manner a fatality would lend to.

Perplexed by the strange tone of atmosphere, Dana slowly pivots her head away from the gunslinger and to the owner who had been shot, her eyebrow raised as in front of her stands the owner, still on his feet, seemingly entirely fine as he doesn’t waver, he doesn’t fall, and his body is fully intact.

Hugging onto the jar with his eyes shut tight, the young boy quivers from the absolute horrors of experiencing a murder, an experience no one especially a being of such youthful age should be experiencing.

Yet while his body remains still and his two main eyes closed, a wrinkle on the temple on the side of his head opens up an aperture that reveals itself to be another eye, its black iris over the white sclera, animated like any other as it moves towards the direction of the encounter.

The eye stares straight for a few moments still before it then closes, the eye reverting back into the same old wrinkle on the head.

A moment after, the two main eyes of the boy open up loosely, and he slowly raises his head with disbelief in his opening mouth and widening black eyes, still clinging to his jar yet now pushing to observe the scene.

Standing motionless, the owner’s blazing glare transforms into a dumbfounded gaze, his eyes dilating and his jaw descending slightly. He finds himself not terminated, rather his own being was left fully unharmed, not a bullet hole, wound, or even a scratch on his skin.

In fact, his firearm is also still intact, solid and in one piece, for the vast majority of his being is fully left untouched. What was not untouched very specifically was the aperture of his gun, the end of the barrel, for that specifically is covered in a thick blue slime functioning as a muzzle cover as it leaves no opening for the weapon to fire, preventing proper actuation. Regardless though, the fact remains that he is still well alive and hardly damaged in any capacity, leaving him befuddled as he was no longer able to retaliate, but he wasn’t particularly defeated just yet.

He turns his gun around to inspect the blue slime with concern, too hesitant to attempt firing due to a lack of comprehension as to the slime’s reactivity, yet in stalling it leaves him defenseless. After finding himself unable to return fire, he focuses his gaze forward, forward to the man wielding the handgun that had struck him, the handgun with copper coils glimmering from the energy output of the shot but gradually dimming in cooldown.

At the back of the handgun is the lit interface screen majorly covered by the wrinkly hand with the thumb over the hammer.

That thumb is of the gunslinger who stands beside Dana and Kokei, both of them astonished and wordless, moving their gaze from the trapped owner who they had thought was assassinated on the spot, and facing the man who took the shot.

The gunslinger just stands still for several moments in follow through as some of the customers further behind back away still wearily, but mostly puzzled by such a strange action made by the armed intruder.

He at last finally makes a motion, that being the closure of his eyes, and a gentle sigh through parted chapped lips.

After the steady release and a lingering rest, he then opens his eyes with their yellow glint, and he explains calmly: “You’ll be wasting energy trying to shoot through that, trust me, it can take more than those little jolts.”

While the owner just stands defenseless, helpless to any followup that could be done on him, a fear reflected in his apprehensive face that studies the slime furthermore, he perks his head up in shock upon hearing the gunslinger elaborate, “It’ll naturally dissolve in about five minutes, give or take, and once it does it will leave no traces on your weapon, and the firearm will function just as before.”

Beside Kokei and Dana who remain silent and astonished, Ekitai releases a huff before then lowering his own firearm whilst surrounded by all of the customers who could be deadly either with their own weapons or abilities, and yet understanding said danger he still decides to conceal his weapon inside the interior pocket of his overcoat, allowing it to vanish behind the cover before he then brings his arm back out to reveal his own lack of lethality.

He then puts both of his hands in his pockets, pulling his coat down before calmly compromising, “Don’t come looking for me, and I won’t do anything to you, simple as that.”

He makes a slight swivel to glance back at all the customers behind him, who upon being turned to stumble back with clear apprehension caused by the stupefaction. During the sweep, Ekitai appends: “That goes for all of you too. Makes it easier for the both of us.”

After returning his gaze forth, Ekitai glances over to Dana and obliges, “He’s not here, let’s get going, come on,” before he then turns around completely, and begins casually walking down the store, his hands pocketed, his back reclined slightly, with not one casualty dealt.

Customers strafe and evade the gunslinger’s path, still uncertain after the heavy stun to their cores, but despite the intruder being defenseless for attack they just stand in silence and watch him make his way down the aisle towards the exit.

Left too dumbstruck, Kokei and Dana exchange glances of puzzlement, astonished by the action considered bizarre given the context of who this man was, a man whose whole niche was being able to end the lives of people in some of the most brutally creative manners, manners he was always ecstatic to execute and only would be forced to hold back when leashed by others, yet at that moment nobody had given him an order.

That was his own choice.

Both Kokei and Dana synchronously turn to face Ekitai, and following with his advice, they begin their walk down the store, also passing fretfully confused customers on their way out, choosing to only keep their gazes forward in their steady march.

Shocked still, the owner just stands on the other side of the counter, his revolver still in hand, covered by the blue slime. Yet it was a blue slime revealed to be temporary, and beyond that short effect there was no damage done to him nor the store. The three invaders, the three aliens from the cosmos above had just left without one good stolen, one innocent murdered, one piece of rock pulled from the wall.

Flabbergast, all the owner can do to react is to just stand and watch the parting of the aliens, his jaw hung, his eyes wide.

Same too is the stupefaction of the young boy who was advanced prior to dispel the product, now left completely alone, still with the substance in hand. He also just stares at the three in their departure, his focus completely shifted away from what was right in his hands.

Not only do the owner and child stare, but so does the teenage girl with the brown tar, the man with the white pills, the elderly woman with the teal substance, and every other customer inside the store whether they are holding a jar of their own that they just collected or empty handed at the moment. All of them just stand and stare in silence, having witnessed a miracle they would have never dreamed of, an event that seemed to collide with every form of logic thus impossible to exist in reality, and yet they had just witnessed it, and they were watching its conclusion, its confirmation.

The whole store illuminated in the shade of teal in disbelief, just watching the three aliens, aliens who had demonstrated what none has ever in centuries of their civilization’s bleedout:

Peace.