The alarms split through the base like serrated bells, jolting everyone awake into motion.
Red glyphs scrawled across the walls, fractured siren‑sigils screaming out one word.
"BREACH."
ACT headquarters had lived with glitches, loops, and repeating hallways but this sound didn't glitch. It was sharp, real. The kind of sound that meant someone very organized had finally found them.
Kaosu shot upright, aura already burning off him in threads of scarlet. "About time. Someone finally grew the guts."
Nyxus shuffled out of a corridor loop, still chewing on half a sweet bun. His hoodie was backwards. He blinked lazily at the alarms, "is this breakfast or war?"
Raiyo passed between them, boots clicking over repeating floor textures that froze into coherence under his steps. He didn't draw a sword. Just sipped from his coffee mug like the sirens were white noise, "Continuum Corps," he said flatly. "Formation units, you can smell their efficiency."
Yamiya adjusted her notebook under one arm, eyes calm but tight. "Sensors count… a hundred and fifty signatures. Corps standardized pattern. This isn't a hunt squad. It's punitive execution."
From further down the glitching hall, Aoikishi's voice was cool, less alarmed by the breach than concerned by the furniture scraping from glitch-loops. "Then we don't wait for them to bring rubble into my headquarters. Outside." His stride was deliberate, coat snapping in the alarm-light. "They want a fight, we give it to them on ground that isn't my hallway."
Kaosu was already in the doorway, crimson aura sparking. "Finally."
Raiyo swirled the last sip of his coffee mug, utterly unimpressed. "Try not to embarrass yourself."
Kaosu snarled. "Embarrass who? You? Please. I'm going to kill twice the Corps you do before lunch."
Raiyo smirked. "Twice? You'll be lucky to match my warm-up swings."
Kaosu snapped,"Warm-up? What is this, yoga class?"
Raiyo's grin sharpened. "Yoga lasts longer than your attention span."
Kaosu laughed, already rolling his neck. "We'll see, toothpick collector."
Raiyo casually tapped one of the four blades on his back. "Funny thing is—this toothpick could split your tantrum in half before your next whine."
Kaosu laughed again, louder. "You're on, mug-boy. Let's count bodies. Loser admits the other one's stronger."
Raiyo drained the last of his coffee and held the mug sideways. "Loser buys a new mug."
Nyxus strolled past with a cracker between his teeth. "And while you two argue, guess who'll
actually win? Me. Whoever kills the most people, wins snacks!"
Kaosu groaned. "This isn't about snacks, you idiot."
Nyxus raised the cracker like it was profound. "Everything is about snacks."
Yamiya sighed,"Can we please pretend we're professionals for five minutes?"
Nyxus replied in agreement," Yeah guys, Yamiya has a point, let's act professional for once.
Kaosu sighed," Is this supposed to be some stupid joke?
The battlefield got quiet, in the opposite side of the field, the squad waiting was about one hundred and fifty strong, a neat formation glowing with corps insignias. A commander stood tall at the center, eyes burning with Binary control. Three lieutenants fanned behind him with swords, rifles, and armor, all spawned in pulses of ordered code. His voice reveberated throughout the battlefield.
"ACT faction, glitched anomalies, flicks-class offenders," the commander shouted, his voice booming with the confidence of his rank. "By the order of the Cosmic Order Division, surrender or be—"
Kaosu cut him off by casually talking to Aokishi," Can I punch this guy yet, he's really getting on my nerves".
The commander stiffened. "I am the rank of Prime Code Commander; very few people alive achieve this rank!
Raiyo actually laughed. "Congratulations, you can fill out forms and yell at children."
If you punch me, and somehow win this battle, a major Colonel will come, and trust me, you don't want that."
Yamiya was even smiling faintly, though she masked it quickly. The lieutenants looked insulted and the commander's face twisted with furious disbelief.
The Corps broke formation, surging forward with Binary blades flashing. Ground cracked under punches, walls punctured by rifle fire. To the average faction, it would've been terrifying.
But to ACT? Kaosu smashed two soldiers into the dirt. "One!"
Boundary cuts shot out from Raiyo's blade, splitting five rifles apart with casual ease. "Five."
Kaousu then yelled,"That was ONE swing, not five MEN!"!"
"Numbers don't lie," Raiyo replied nonchalantly. "People do."
"You idiot" Kaosu's aura swirled brighter, grounding another two enforcers into the plaza. "Nine!"
Raiyo sliced another soldier while sipping calmly from his mug. "Twelve."
Nyxus tossed a half-eaten bun into a soldier's helmet, It exploded into crumbs, leaving the man collapsing in panic. He leaned down, plucked another bun from his hoodie, and shrugged.
"One snack equals two enemies," Nyxus declared. "I'm winning."
Kaosu's voice cracked with fury. "Stop making up rules!"
Yamiya shook her head, notebook already open. "Why are they like this…"
The battle would've been over quickly, Corps soldiers where overwhelmed, their commander was straining to throw unstable Binary-generated lava across the plaza—when suddenly the formation collapsed.
It wasn't chaos from Kaosu. It wasn't cuts from Raiyo.
It was… fear.
Soldiers stumbled back from the center ranks, their weapons glitching out of existence in their hands. One man screamed as his blade sank into static the minute it touched the pale figure walking calmly through. "My, my weapon! I can't, i-t's gone!"
Another soldier grabbed the strange figure's shoulder. The soilders arm simply phased, it flickered like broken pixels. His scream was jagged and endless. Where his arm had been, there was now… nothing.
The pale figure's voice cut coldly through the air, flat and detached
"Don't touch me."
He brushed another soldier's arm. It vanished past the elbow in an instant. The man fell shrieking. The figure muttered quietly, like he was apologizing only to himself.
"I warned you not to," the mysterious adult said.
Kaosu froze mid-count. "What the hell… did I just watch?"
Raiyo's looked confused. "Hands like that shouldn't exist."
Nyxus noisily crunched the last of his biscuit. "That guy's hands are cursed."
Yamiya whispered, "That wasn't erasure, that was instability upon touch.
The ACT members edged closer, studying him. The man looked… wrong. His skin was pale and
flaky, his hair white but faded like it had once held color before reality wore it out. Bagged eyes that seemed sharp despite being hollow. Peculiar, unsettling.
Raiyo finally set down his mug, voice steady but edged.
"Since I first drew breath, my swords have never broken. A good swordsman protects his blade,
stabilizes it with his energy. This sword" here is sharp enough to disrupt Yamiya's glitched flow, Kaousu's punches didn't break it and it even scratched Aokishi. This was forged from the strongest matter I've ever seen, it's unbreakable."
Nyxus raised his eyebrow mid-chew. "Then why are you monologuing about it like an insurance ad?"
Raiyo yelled in annoyance," Yeah well what do you know about swords!"
Nyxus replied," Well what do you know about snacks?"
Raiyo replied again, this time seriously frustrated," Is there something wrong with your brain?
Aokishi then gestured to the pale stranger, he tilted his head slightly, expression unreadable.
One ACT recruit lunged at the figure. The soldier was very tall, his skin was so strong that he
didn't need a sword or iron, his body was basically armor. He then threw a punch at the pale figure; weirdly enough the punch was stopped. No, it was gone, gone instantly, as if the world never coded it to exist. The soldier screamed and stumbled, clutching a stump of absence.
It was clear that whatever the pale stranger touched disappeared and broke, but it wasn't clear how.
The strange man's hand rose calmly for the man's head, it was deliberate, almost tender.
Raiyo then smirked as his blade drew free. "New technique, Heart's Severance."
In a blur, he appeared at the stranger's chest. His blade skewered the air between brain and heart, a perfect lethal strike, his strongest motion yet.
The blade connected, sharp as destiny. For a heartbeat, it was the most perfect strike Raiyo had ever made.
Then it began to collapse.
The weapon jittered, eating itself from the edge in, like being dissolved in acid code. In seconds, the unbreakable sword folded into static fragments, scattering in broken glyphs before vanishing
entirely.
Raiyo stood frozen, still gripping the empty hilt.
The ACT squad fell into stunned silence.
Kaosu mocked and insulted Raiyo," What happened to your blade being invincible? I thought it hadn't broke since you were born.
The fragments of Raiyo's "unbreakable" blade flickered out like dying pixels, leaving only silence and shock.
The pale stranger tilted his head and began to move. His right hand twitched, reaching low, steady, deliberate. The intent was impossible to misread — his palm extended straight toward Raiyo's chest.
Raiyo tensed, nowhere to go, when a blur of crimson light materialized beside him.
With reckless precision, Kaosu drove his fist across the stranger's jaw. The impact cracked like a gunshot, launching the pale figure across the courtyard into a collapsed wall. Stone cracked
outward in webs. Dust spilled down over him like falling ash.
Kaosu smirked, shaking his hand loose. "That's how you punch, mug-boy." "Real men fight with their fists, not toothpicks."
The pale stranger rose slowly, brushing dust from his shoulder without hurry. No blood. No injury. He looked almost… unbothered.
Raiyo's eyes narrowed. "I had that. Don't intervene again. You could have gotten yourself killed."
Kaosu barked a laugh. "Me, Struggling, Please. Your fancy toothpicks barely hold up against
wind. Next time, leave the real fighting to someone with fists."
Nyxus leaned against a cart, munching through a flaky cracker. "Correction —
"Shut up," Kaosu and Raiyo snapped at the same time.
From the edge of the square, the Continuum Corps commander and his three lieutenants froze mid-command. Eyes wide, they stumbled over their own shock.
One of the lieutenants muttered, "That strike… he's still standing?!"
The commander's jaw locked, pride cracking beneath disbelief. He had broken entire strongholds with his power, crushed buildings beneath Binary-forged constructs — and here was a pale, frail stranger shrugging off blows that would have splintered platoons.
Kaosu rolled his neck and spat into the dirt. "Who the hell are you, freak?"
Raiyo swallowed his frustration and stiffened his shoulders. "No… he deserves to answer for that blade. That wasn't chance. That was strength. Tell us your name."
For a moment, nothing. The stranger's bagged eyes looked them both over. In a voice colder than frost, he finally spoke.
"My name is Veydras."
The weight of the name sunk in the air. It wasn't loud; it was hollow, like the world itself hesitated around it.
Raiyo's grip hardened on his remaining blades. "So, Veydras… you're the one who can damage what's unbreakable." "I'd be happy to beat you."
Kaosu scoffed. "I'm taking him. You can go polish your broken toothpicks."
"In your dreams," Raiyo snapped. "I'll handle him. You'd just swing like a child."
The two of them bolted forward together, sprinting side-by-side — only to slam their skulls into each other mid-run.
"Stay out of my line, idiot!" Raiyo snarled.
They shoved each other like children racing for candy, regaining pace. Kaosu forced himself an inch ahead, teeth bared, and swung a right hulk punch straight at Veydras.
The pale man didn't dodge. His hand rose instead, reaching for Kaosu's waist, intent clear, to remove his entire lower body from the upper.
A centimeter before both attacks made contact, Raiyo blurred past, blade whipping low, he almost whispered,"microcut". He sliced out a segment of the world causing the stranger to miss
kaousu.
Raiyo then tried finishing Veydras with a slice to the neck, but before he could Kaousu sent a back kick sending Veydras crashing through another wall.
Kaousu boasted," That is how real men fight.
"Idiot," Raiyo hissed at Kaosu. "You are a liability, you threw yourself in without thought, you leave me to clean up your mess. One slip and he would have disassembled you."
Kaosu sighed. "The hell do you mean, I was about to punch him."
Raiyo," replied," He was about to slap you."
Kaousu dismissed,"What the hell was that slap going to do, we were going to trade punches and hits, it's obvious I'm stronger and faster than him."
"Trade blows with what?!" Raiyo shot back. "His touch makes things disappear. Do you trade bones too?"
Kaosu laughed, veins of scarlet energy throbbing. "If it takes chaos to beat him, then fine — I'll drown him in it!"
Their bickering cut short as Veydras lunged. His right hand swung toward Raiyo's throat. Raiyo prepared to meet it when, suddenly… Veydras slipped.
It wasn't technique. It wasn't magic. His foot dragged against the dirt, catching on a pebble Kaosu's chaotic multipliers had displaced when his fist had struck Veydras jaw minutes earlier.
The impact shifted probability, so small, so stupid, and yet it was enough.
Veydras' pale eyes flickered with sharp, quiet rage. His hand lowered to the ground.
Static hissed at his touch. Dirt fragmented. Slabs of courtyard stone flickered and vanished in jagged chunks. The remaining ground collapsed uneven beneath ACT's feet, warping the battlefield itself.
Kaosu paced forward, rolling his shoulders. "Finally getting interesting. I was bored." Crimson threads spooled down his arms, flaring as he summoned a half-born echo of chaos. A partial clone formed from his aura, thin as heat shimmer but alive. Its red grin stretched with wilder intent.
"I'll let him play with this one."
The clone strode toward the pale stranger. Unfazed, Veydras extended one hand casually. He met the clone's incoming fist with his palm.
Red sparks burned too bright. Chaos snarled.
Then — the clone screamed. A sound like fractured glass weeping, as probabilities curdled. Its form warped, trembling, before folding in entirely into static.
The clone was gone. Utterly erased.
Silence crushed the courtyard.
Even Nyxus stopped chewing. He lowered the last biscuit in his hand slowly. "…Okay," he muttered, eyebrows raising. "That's a first."
Yamiya's pen froze mid-scroll. "He touched… chaos."
Kaosu's grin died on his lips.
Even he wasn't laughing anymore.