Chapter 6 Enemies of the Concord
Yamiya Mieko woke with the weight of someone else's words still in her ears.
No… not someone else's.
Karma's.
She sat up in the narrow bunk, her breath fogging in the cold air. The dim lights flickered like they were syncing to her pulse.
The metallic tang in her mouth was familiar — not blood, but the taste of something being overwritten.
The memory was jagged: a map she wasn't supposed to see, names she wasn't supposed to know, a pull toward something she didn't want to find.
She blinked. The door to her quarters slid open.
Aokishi walked past, hands in his pockets, giving her a sideways nod.
She laid back down.
The door slid open.
Aokishi walked past again — same nod, same footstep pattern.
Her lips curved slightly. "Oh right, the base."
ACT Headquarters didn't behave, rooms repeated, conversations replayed and sometimes you'd pass someone in a hallway only to meet them walking toward you from the opposite direction a second later.
It wasn't haunted, it was broken. They'd built it on a fracture in the Continuum, forcing its members to adapt to glitches until they stopped feeling wrong.
Survival here meant learning the rhythm of instability, and also learning how to control your glitched energy; preventing you from becoming unstable
When she found Aokishi again, he was leaning over the common hall's table, lazily moving glowing chess pieces in a game against himself.
Aokishi smirked,"You've got the look," he said without glancing up.
Yamiya replied confused,"What look?"
He replied,"The 'I saw something I wasn't supposed to' look." I see it all the time." He slid a rook across the board into the wrong square with deliberate nonchalance. "Come on, it's time for the Anti Chaotic Factions Meeting."
The meeting room was already packed. Mismatched chairs, mugs steaming with something halfway between coffee and ozone, the air buzzing faintly with static. On the wall, a projection screen flickered between corrupted maps and lines of scrolling code.
Access Denied was slouched in a chair, chewing on a biscuit that definitely wasn't from the base's kitchen. Kaosu leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching him like he couldn't decide if he was annoyed or impressed.
Aokishi didn't sit. He leaned back against the table, voice as casual as if he were announcing a lunch order. "Alright, people. As of right now, we've officially made ourselves enemies of the Continuum Concord."
Kaosu's arms tightened across his chest. Yamiya's gaze sharpened. Nyxus… just tilted his head.
"Never heard of them," Nyxus said. "They sound boring."
Kaosu let out a sharp breath. "They'll sound less boring when they've got your head in a jar."
Nyxus protested," That's impossible, my head is too big to fit in a jar."
Kaousu replied in frustration," Idiot, that's not even the point, it's a metaphor!
Aokishi sighed,"Some of you are probably thinking, 'the what concord?' And that's fair. The Concord isn't exactly in your school history books. For most folks, it's either a conspiracy theory or a bedtime story about why reality works the way it does."
Aoikishi continued, voice steady, "The Continuum Concord, or CC, is the ultimate authority. They govern all known—and unknown—realities. You might hear whispers about them, doubt them. But their reach? Infinite. They're the code that writes existence."
"Sounds like a bunch of control freaks," Nyxus muttered.
Aokishi didn't disagree. "Control is their religion. And right now, their focus is anyone with measurable Flicks."
Nyxus blinked. "That's the glitch thing, right?"
Yamiya's voice was calm, low. "It's more than that. Flicks are dissonance — a measure of how far you deviate from the intended flow. It can come from your energy, your actions… or from what you are."
Aokishi smiled, "They call it 'Flicks' glitches in reality. Sometimes it's from unstable glitched energy, although people without glitched energy can still have flicks.
Look at it this way, reality is what the continuum concord decides and codes it to be. Naturally by code most people are similar, the people that are different are seen as glitches in reality; therefore people like karma without glitched energy still can have flicks.
They measure flicks with the Disruption Index. Low numbers, you're a bug in their system, high numbers? You're a bomb in their vault."
He flicked his wrist, and the hologram morphed, splitting into two emblematic halves. "Their power is split into two main arms: the Governmental and the Martial."
"The Governmental side? They're the highest echelon at the top lies the Continuum Concord itself, "Think of them as the landlords of reality, they own everything. What's known, unknown, imagined, forgotten… if it exists, it's on their property.
Below them is the (COD) Cosmic Order Division — the lawyers, judges, and bounty accountants of the cosmos."
Aoikishi's eyes glinted. "The Martial division is the muscle. The big guns. At the top, you have the Corrective Tribunal; they are the most elite branch of the military.
Beneath them, the Continuum Corps. That's where warriors like Torin aspire to be. Their mission? Hunt down anyone who carries excessive Flicks."
Kaosu scoffed. "So, what, they just check a number and decide who gets erased?"
"Not just erased," Yamiya said, folding her hands. "Removed from the sequence. No memories, no records, no cause or effect that would imply you were ever here. It's not death. It's… subtraction."
Nyxus raised an eyebrow. "That's creepy. Like… ultra delete."
Aokishi snapped his fingers like Nyxus had nailed it. "Exactly. They rank Flicks by classification
"Nominal: 0–199 flicks. Harmless. Logged, but ignored.
Aberrant: 200–499. Weird, inconsistent, doesn't fit the mold.
Anomalous: 500–899. Deviates from the system.
Volatile class: 900–1,499. Unstable. Hard to kill, harder to contain
Disjunction: 1,500–9,999. Breaks causality. Reality says no, they say yes.
Conflux: 9,999–100,000. Local timeline folding, law rewriting.
Continuum Class: 100,000–100 million. A threat to the whole structure.
Redacted Tier: 100 million–1 quadrillion. Indirect threats to the continuum concord
Unknown Tier: …well, that's when the system stops pretending it understands you."
"Nominals are barely a hiccup. Aberrants… they're like coffee stains — annoying but ignorable. Anomalous? Those are the ones that start bending the furniture. Volatile Class — the kind of people you throw into the deepest cell you can find and pray they don't notice the door's unlocked.
Disjunction Class that cell, won't contain them. Conflux? They fold timelines like laundry. Then there's Continuum Class where you don't even fight them, you just write your will. And Redacted Tier… well, that's where the math stops working."
Aokishi let the list hang in the air. "There are other classes Eidolonic, Theo-classified — stuff even I can't get into. But for our purposes, this is enough to get you killed or paid." "We're small fish. But we just swam into the Continuum Concord's net.
Keep your heads down and your Flicks under control… unless you want to see how high your number can go."
The higher you go, the more they see you as a breach that needs to be patched."
Kaosu's gaze narrowed. "And what classification is my dad, Karma?"
"High Conflux," Aokishi replied without hesitation. "The only Conflux-level threat in seven multiverses, and one of the highest in that tier. He's the kind of problem that makes the Corrective Tribunal skip their lunch break."
Nyxus grinned faintly. "So, we're picking a fight with the guy who's basically their nightmare fuel."
"Not picking," Aokishi said, tone cooling. "Already picked."
Kaosu glanced at Aokishi. "And how about you?"
Aokishi replied," That's classified."
Nyxus pointed to the projection. "what's my number?"
Kaosu muttered without looking at him, "Somewhere between 'idiot' and 'walking hazard'."
Nyxus shrugged. "Hazard sounds cooler."
Aokishi ignored the banter, letting the silence stretch before speaking. "The Concord isn't sending their whole force yet — they'll test us first.
Probes, Corps units, Tribunal agents if they think we're worth the paperwork." He leaned forward, voice dipping into something sharper. "And when that happens, you'd better know how to control your glitched energy, or they will use it against you.
The projection stuttered, fractals fracturing into static before locking onto a single, jagged sigil. The air seemed to hum with it, low and wrong.
Yamiya's eyes lingered on it. "That's not Concord protocol."
"No," Aokishi said. "That's Karma's mark."
Kaosu's jaw tightened. Nyxus leaned back in his chair, tilting it onto two legs like the weight of the conversation didn't touch him.
Aokishi straightened. "We're in the same story as him now. And the Concord doesn't like unsanctioned plotlines."
The projection faded, the sigil dissolving into black. The hum in the air lingered for a moment before dissolving into the background static of the base.
Aokishi clapped his hands once, slowly. "Don't worry, guys, we don't need to panic yet. I'll let you know when we should start panicking."
Kaosu gave him a sharp look. "And when exactly will that be?"
"When my hair starts turning gray," Aokishi said. He tapped the brim of his hat. "And since you can't tell under this, you'll just have to trust me."
Nyxus leaned back further in his chair, balancing on two legs. "I'll know. I'm good at spotting panic. Saw a guy panic once so bad he tried to eat his own shoes."
Yamiya's head tilted. "Was that… you?"
Nyxus took a thoughtful bite of his biscuit. "No, maybe."
Kaosu groaned. "We're doomed."
The meeting dissolved into smaller clusters some leaning over the corrupted maps, others loitering near the steaming mugs. The air was still heavy with unspoken questions.
Nyxus wandered over to a hologram, squinting at a distorted face tagged with 403 Flicks. "This guy looks like he owes me money."
"You've never met him," Yamiya said flatly.
"Exactly," Nyxus said. "Suspicious."
Kaosu muttered, "I should've joined a normal Faction. One with less… this."
Aokishi passed behind him, patting him once on the shoulder. "You'll warm up to us. Or you won't. Either way, you're here."
By the time they left the meeting room, the corridors of ACT Headquarters were glitching in earnest — one doorway leading back into the same hallway, Kaosu swearing as he walked through it three times before realizing the wall texture was repeating.
Nyxus just walked straight into it until he disappeared entirely.
Kaosu froze. "Where'd he go?"
Aokishi leaned casually against the wall. "If we're lucky, the loop drops him in the kitchen. If not… well, we'll probably hear the screaming."
Nyxus reappeared from the opposite side of the hallway, holding a sandwich.
"Kitchen," Nyxus confirmed, mouth full.
Yamiya glanced at him, unbothered. "You didn't take the one marked Do Not Eat, did you?"
Nyxus swallowed. "…Was I not supposed to?"
Kaosu slapped a hand over his face. "You idiot, that's the one Aokishi uses for experiments!"
Aokishi shrugged. "Don't worry. If it's toxic, we'll know in about ten minutes."