–and then he would meet Zo in 'Locust Mash'. But when he awoke, it was the middle of the night. He looked over to beside him, and Noelle and Leon were still slouching against each other, snoring loudly. Ant slowly got up so as not to wake them up, and he looked outside the window, where the view was as pretty as ever, and then he shuffled outside. It was still snowing badly and Ant wondered if it ever stopped. Noelle had said that the south end of Chelsey was where Locust Mash resided, and he took notice of a sign earlier that said that the entrance to Hotel Edgar was facing north. So that meant that Locust Mash was behind him.
Back on his planet, he really liked a character called Spider-Man, or at least his abilities, and the power he had to produce webs from his wrists. Using these webs, he could swing around, and Ant took inspiration from him. He didn't have any buildings to use, but that was hardly a problem, and using his Godly Fragment, he created stable objects that were frozen in the air. Golden whips, chain-like ropes, emerged from the palm of his hand, and he swung. He tried to mimic Spider-Man as close as possible, but every time he tried, he could feel vomit well up in his throat. He tried to stay as close to the ground as possible, mainly because if he fell it would hurt less, and also so that he could see the roofs of the buildings and not go off-track in the heavy snow.
Ant had barely made it one kilometre before he resorted to puking in a trash can, and then he decided to walk the rest. He trudged in the ankle-deep snow, feeling the cold spread to the tips of his toes and creep slowly upwards.
Right, he thought. I can make fire.
A golden flame emerged from his feet, and the cold was expelled. The snow around him melted, and the blizzard that surrounded him turned to water, and then it turned to steam. Almost every light in the city was out, but in the distance, he could faintly make out the illuminated silhouette of Locust Mash, and it was a beacon, guiding him to his destination.
And then he made it.
Locust mash took the form of multiple arches in a row, each side stuffed with buildings selling a variety of items and the smell of rotten truffles spewed from cigarette butts on the ground. So they exist here too, Ant thought, and he noticed that everybody in the area took notice of him, but refused to pay him attention. I'm happy they aren't bowing, but something about this feels uncomfortable. Ant was looking to his side at a shop called "Assorted Goods" when a short person covered in a cloak ran into them, and they fell over.
"Oh, sorry. I didn't see you there," Ant said, and he crouched down to help them up, but the cloak-covered person appeared with all of their belongings in their hands, moving so fast they could have teleported.
"Sit at that table," they said, and their voice seemed to speak on multiple pitches at once. "He is waiting."
Ant turned around to the lone table where two chairs sat opposite each other. A ring of cloaked people surrounded it, and every few seconds two people swapped their place or maybe they swapped with other people. Nevertheless, everyone was wearing a cloak. At least fourteen people were smoking cigarettes, and over ten people were using a pipe.
Ant walked up to the table. Everyone went silent. He pulled back one of the chairs, its wooden legs scraping across the cobblestones, and he sat down. Everyone kneeled.
He began to sweat, but he pushed back on his seat, putting his feet on the table, both hands behind his back.
"So, where's Zo?" he said, and everything went silent, the snow slowed, stopping in mid-air, and then a sudden wind blew from the south, blowing Ant's hair and scarf backwards, and then it shifted directions, east, west, north, and then it stopped, and when Ant lifted his arms from his eyes, and a man of average height wearing a completely black suit only broken by a white tie walked towards the table. He wore a black fedora like a mafia boss, and Ant realized it was a Sable, and their beak was pierced with hanging gemstones, and their large shell was missing. He sat in the chair–but wasn't he ten metres away?
"It's a technique my disciples use to move extremely fast. It does make a good entrance, but it requires a lot of energy," the Sable said. When he talked, his beak was stationary, almost like a mask. He clapped his hands. The sound was absolute and clear, and it resonated while he introduced himself. He lifted his head; he wore tinted sunglasses.
"You must be Ant Infele. I am–" he moved his arm in a flurry of speedy movements– "Zo."
Silence.
"Why did you call me here?" Ant said.
"Well, you see, Mox is dying."
"I know that."
"I see, then. Let's get straight to the point. I've developed a plan. But it requires one small, tiny thing that is absolutely vital."
"Tell me this plan, then," Ant noticed a glass of transparent orange liquid on the table that wasn't there before.
"The problem with Mox is that too many people are too loyal," Zo raised both of his arms in a Y-shape. "Jikoku is too weak for us. I'm suggesting that we kill him."
"Kill… a god?" Ant sighed loudly. "Who do you think we are? And besides, Jikoku isn't a bad guy. He just cares a lot. Maybe too much."
Zo laughed. "You're already a god. The Universe recognizes you as one. And Jikoku has been severely weakened, when a God's creations are destroyed, the piece they used to create it must regenerate. And Jikoku has been suffering. He's created too much and he has lost too much. We don't need him. We can just create things ourselves."
"You've gone mad, haven't you?" Ant slapped the table. "I haven't even heard of this regeneration mumbo jumbo shit, even in the waiting room."
He stood up, and the crowd surrounding them took a step back, recoiling. "And besides, what makes you think that we can kill a god, even with my fragment?"
Ant looked to his side. "Jikoku could be listening to us right now, you realise that?"
"He can't," Zo sighed, covering his eyes with his right hand. "This place has been filtered."
Ant didn't even feel like asking him what that meant.
"The point still remains," Zo stood up, facing Ant. "As the savior, you're going to bring peace by breaking it. Even if The Peacebreaker decides to disagree with me, I can just take their fragment for myself."
"I'd like to see you try."
Zo turned. His back was facing Ant. "I'll give you until the next lunar cycle to think about it. I will see you every–" he checked his wristwatch– "week asking for your decision."
"You won't be satisfied until I say yes."
"That's the point."
The north and east winds blew suddenly, and then the south and west, and Zo had vanished. Ant turned, the crowd of cloaked people were still standing there. They all raised their arms in a slightly tilted angle, and a wave of sleepiness overcame him, and then he fainted.
Something was very, very wrong.
"Morning, sleepyhead."
Ant opened his eyes. He was in the hotel room, and Noelle was sitting cross-legged next to him, wearing a white fluffy robe.
"Were you watching me sleep?" Ant said groggily as he rose up. "And why am I here, anyway?"
"What do you mean? You slept here?" Noelle tilted her head. "Also, you were holding this weird letter thing. Sorry, I opened it and read it."
Noelle handed Ant the letter. It was the size of one A5, and it contained a grid of timers, each one slowly ticking down. The one that was closest had the time of around one week.
"What is this?" He asked, rotating the piece of paper around to see if it was double-sided.
"I don't know. It's yours, anyway," Noelle shrugged, and then she hopped off of the bed. "Wake up faster. It wasn't smart loitering for that long, so we've decided to only go outing for four or five hours today."
Ant groaned. "Do I need to come?"
"Well, you don't need to, but it'll be helpful gaining passive income and getting freaking 90% off discounts."
"I'm not in the mood to walk. I need to contemplate."
"About what?" Noelle scoffed. "That sketchy-ass letter you got?"
"I already went."
"Sure, buddy," Noelle yawned, stretching her arms. "I need to get changed. Bye, now. See you at the entrance."
Ant sighed, and then he flopped back into a lying position. And he indeed did contemplate.
Zo's plan was preposterous. Killing a god? What kind of suicide mission was that? And did Zo really think that a godless world was better than this? Ant didn't even know if Mox was dying at this point. Everything seemed okay.
Compared to Earth, that is.
"As the savior, you're going to bring peace by breaking it. Even if The Peacebreaker decides to disagree with me, I can just take their fragment for myself."
What did he mean by that? If Zo somehow killed him, would the godly fragment remain? And how could he claim it? Eating it? Piercing his chest with it? Replacing his heart with it? And what did he mean by 'filtered'?
He didn't know why he felt like killing Zo, or at least rendering him incapacitated.
Ant didn't know how long he had spent thinking of possible scenarios, and he didn't question himself whether he was overthinking this or giving it just the right amount of attention.
He was woken from his trance by Leon, who came to his room to tell him that Noelle told him to tell Ant that he was taking too long, and to hurry up or else they would miss something.
"Miss what?" Ant groaned, stretching upwards. "Sales?"
"I'm not sure," Leon said.
"Well, tell her to buzz off. I'm doing something important."
"Which is?"
Ant squinted, tilting his head. "Thinking."
"Oh, uh, ok. See you later, then, mister," Leon turned and left.
Ant grabbed the piece of paper beside him and raised it, portraying it against the ceiling. It seemed that a few hours had passed.
While I'm here, I guess I'll just see what's on TV, Ant thought to himself. In front of his bed a TV was attached to the wall, and below it was a floating shelf, holding a pot plant, an apple on a pedestal, and the remote control. Ant grabbed it, walking backwards to the bed, before slouching against the pile of pillows he had made.
The TV flickered onto a personalised home page with a looping drone shot of The Maximum, time-lapsing between cycles of day and night. He pressed the first button on the homepage, called channels, and it brought him to a long list of channels, from 0 to 500.
News, news, news, and then a sports channel, where people with spinning helicopter blades on their heads ran into each other. People were booing from the stands. The next channel wasn't much better and it displayed another wacky sport, which appeared to be tennis but in groups of five with ten balls. Ant rolled off of the bed, walking into the main room, where a kitchen was against the right wall. He had never thought to look in this area, and his search resulted in finding four packaged chocolate cookies and a coffee machine. Ant did not like coffee, but he welcomed the chocolate cookies into his mouth, eating all of them.
He wondered when they were going to leave Chelsey and go back to Ferunt. He wondered how Evangeline was doing and whether she had gotten any jobs recently, and whether she had made enough money to stay alive.
Of course she did, Ant told himself.
As he brushed off the cookie crumbs off his shirt, Ant checked the countdown grid again. It ticked, silent and slow, waiting. Waiting for whatever was going to happen in one week's time. Ant had no idea what would happen when the timer hit zero, but a part of him thought that he had a basic idea.
Ant flickered through TV channels for the rest of the day, occasionally stopping to view something that caught his interest, but nothing really made him sit up and pay attention. When two hours had passed, Ant landed on a documentary detailing how the Parers came together. He had arrived mid-episode, so he was missing a lot of context.
"...Humans were the dominant race until multiple protests were held, and the first ever Sable was elected for president in the country known as Prim. Ever since then, Sables and humans have existed together. And then came Drayls, from the south. Nobody knew where they came from, and the Drayls themselves did not know…"
Ant checked the program guide, the documentary still playing in the corner. All of a sudden, a message popped up onto the screen:
"There will be heavy snow tonight, so TV connections may be weak."
Ant clicked off of the message, and then went back to scrolling through channels.
When Noelle and Leon came back, they looked completely the same, but Leon was holding a giant plastic bottle filled with a purple-yellow shake like a sunset, and he was drinking it from a plastic straw. "Hello," Noelle said.
"How was life without sales?" Ant chuckled. He got up from his bed, stretching his arms.
"I'm gonna take a shower," Noelle said, taking the band out of her hair, releasing her ponytail. She hung up her white jacket on a hook.
"Do you want to try my shake, mister?" Leon offered him the cup.
"Nah, I'm okay."
Even with Leon and Noelle back, the room felt quieter than before. Leon nodded, finishing the smoothie. He dropped the cup into a bin and left the room, and Ant was contained with nothing but his thoughts once more.
20 minutes later, all three of them had finished showering. Ant continued the documentary about Parer relationships, but he had missed quite a bit of it.
"...However, a war had broken out between the three races, a war that had lasted two years. It started on the ground where Supra was made from, and when it ended, the land was so barren that nothing could be built there, and the soil was too dead for anything to grow. A very powerful person dug up the desolate earth and rotated it, but it remained in the air as one solid piece. We do not know who, as texts have been burnt in a fire, and to learn more about the creation of Supra next week at 5PM. After the war, tension was high between the Parers, and–,"
The program stuttered, and then a green flash of light flickered across the screen, and then the screen went black. Two seconds later, a grey message popped up. "No Signal".
Ant sighed loudly, he heard Noelle groan from the next room. He got up from his bed, turning the TV off, and he walked into the living room. Noelle was wearing nothing but a white robe, sitting cross legged on an orange couch. She was staring at the ceiling, her long black hair draping down the back of the couch. Ant coughed.
"Oh, uh, hi, Ant!" she stuttered, tightening the robe around her waist. "The TV's not… not working."
"When are we going to go back to Ferunt?" Ant said.
"We're going back?" Noelle tilted her head. "We don't have a reason to go back."
"Oh, really?" Ant sighed, sitting down on the ottoman in-between Noelle and the TV.
"Yeah, I mean, we can get everything here for free and we have this entire penthouse to ourselves!" Noelle spread her arms in the air.
"What about your best friend?" Ant held his hands together. "Don't you still need to support Evangeline?"
"She'll be alright," Noelle sighed. "Weren't you the one who said you wouldn't come back?"
Ant put his face in his hands. "I changed my mind, okay?"
"Hey, Ant," Noelle stood up and sat next to him. "You don't need to worry about Evie. She's hard to hurt."
"How can you be so sure?" Ant replied. Noelle put her arm around his shoulder, though she looked annoyed. "Can you really be this selfish?" Ant said.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, we're hogging this entire floor of the hotel. Everywhere we go we're just taking people's stuff, free of charge or with discounts that are too high."
"That's a good thing!" Noelle snorted. "I mean, we can go to a really really posh buffet free of charge, and we can get the most luxurious clothes brands known to Mox! Why would we go back to a small wooden hut in a starving village? Here, we have running water. The Beast Hunter's office isn't even heated."
Ant sighed loudly. Suddenly, Noelle jumped backwards, as if Ant had turned into a giant spider for a moment.
The TV behind them flickered awake, and the news channel Noelle was watching turned on again.
"...And in other news," Noelle turned the TV off.
"I'm gonna go to sleep," she sighed. "You should, too."
"How long are we gonna stay?" Ant said to her turned back.
"One week, I guess."
Ant subconsciously checked the countdown grid in his pocket.
Six days.
"I'm still wide awake," Ant said. "I'll… go to sleep later."
He had lied. He was extremely tired and his eyelids were extremely heavy. It took a lot of strength just to stand up. He flopped onto the couch where Noelle sat before she left for her room and turned on the TV, finding the history channel.
"...So the Drayls replied by maki–ng their own city. The city has been kept secret for hundr–eds of genera–tions, and to this day we do not know where it is, but we do kn–ow that 70% of the Drayl p–opulat–ion lives there. After 10 years had passed, the t–hree races attended a meeting with their leaders, deciding to treat them how they would treat themselves, and th–e term 'Parers' was coined. Conflicts w–o–uld not continue for years until–"
The TV screen was stuttering and the audio droned in odd places, but it still remained watchable. Ant watched the TV for around one hour until he was on the verge of falling asleep. He picked up the remote to turn it off, but a loud noise came from above, possibly from on top of the roof, and then the TV shook, blinking profusely in pink and green, then it stopped, and three seconds later the TV fell from its stand, landing onto the carpets and spraying shards of glass everywhere. The fragments that flew towards Ant stopped just before hitting his body, and when he exhaled they dropped, all of their momentum lost. "Shit," he muttered, crouching down to see if the fall was really that bad. It was. The lamp nearby him flickered, and then the glass shattered. "Shit!" he cried, exasperated. Did the world hate him? Ant found the table next to the TV in the dark and found the white telephone that connected him to reception.
"Yo," he said. "The TV fucking exploded."
"I see," said the person on the other side, their voice exasperated. "What do you want us to do?"
"To call a mechanic over?"
"Sir, it's 3AM at night. No mechanic is awake in all of Chelsey."
"Goddamn it," Ant sighed, putting down the phone as the receiver said: "I don't think a mechanic can fix an exploded TV."
Ant kicked at the wall and pain spread to the tips of his toes… damn, that hurt. The lights on the roof flickered and a small shard of glass fell onto the ground. The carpeted floor had become a spiky trap of glass fragments.
At that moment someone knocked. "Who would be knocking at this hour?" Ant said to himself, scanning the door for a peephole, but he found nothing.
"Ant Infele," came from a woman's voice, and it was extremely familiar to Ant. "Don't you know it's rude to leave people on your doorstep?"
"You're still using her voice?" Ant spat. He was wide awake now, but he didn't know about his legs.
"I'm afraid I'll have to let myself in," said the voice.
Silence.
And the door then exploded.
The remains sped past Ant, who had no time to block or to activate a shield, and they skimmed into his skin, and the blood from a cut under his left eye forced him to change his vision with his hand.
"You are in the presence of a god," said an unseen voice, and Ant lifted his arms. A girl around one year younger than him wearing the same uniform he wore had her ponytail cut off into medium-length hair. She was leaning against the doorframe, and on her back were two snapping tendrils made out of flickering electricity. "Long time no see, Ant Infele?"
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Ant laughed, but he could feel his stomach spiraling. He glanced, a large piece of wood was stuck in his abdomen. He tilted his head to the room where Noelle and Leon were sleeping. There was no way they would've missed that noise. But then again, Noelle and Leon were some of the deepest sleepers he had ever known.
"There was a change of plans. Your notoriety has spread to The Upper, and I made the decision to kill you here and now."
"Who the hell is The Upper?" when Ant said the words it was as if something had stabbed the back of his neck.
Raiden put a finger to his lips. "Possessing this schoolgirl is indeed low for someone like me, but it was needed," he said extremely fast, as if to make sure that Ant knew that this was against his will.
"Noelle! Leon! There's–" he couldn't finish the words before a bolt of yellow lightning tore through the room—he didn't even register where it came from. His body lifted off the ground, crashing backward through the window. The freezing Altior wind met him mid-flight, and glass shards from the shattering frame cut deep into his back. Blood trailed behind him. His skin cracked, scorched.
Damn it.
Ant, in an act of desperation, created a small orb of golden light in the air and a rope made out of the same material was produced from the palm of his hand, and he stopped mid-air, hanging from the dangling rope. He looked down and he found that he was just below cloud level. Ant glanced back to The Maximum, where the embedded apartments were drenched in darkness, except the one at the very top, where the windows had been destroyed and the levitating god of lightning stood. The electric tendrils on Raiden's back split, turning into 8, and Lily's body was held out of the window, held by nothing but the surging legs like a giant spider.
He lifted up her arm, and then the penthouse behind them went dark, and strings of pure yellow light laced into her back. The electric appendages pulsated, and then the palm of Raiden's hand began to break apart, revealing a small hole of flesh. A ball of electricity appeared in the hole, like a miniature sun or a small black hole. A giant beam of lightning fired from the contained storm in her palm.
And Ant needed to dodge.
He released the rope, falling down, but in the process barely skimming the bottom of the blast. He blocked forward with his arms, his legs flailing uncontrollably. The wind… it was so powerful. Ant thought it would give him frostbite. Raiden looked at his hand. Lily's hand. It was burnt and had been reduced to a charred end. He sighed. His power was too much for this girl to handle. He shook her hand in the air, and the skin magically started to grow back. Nevertheless, he made another move, for Ant's death could not wait.
"Die," he said, and he projected off of the windows, breaking the walls even more, leaping at Ant at a speed he could not fathom.
He appeared in front of Ant and made fists coated in lightning. He moved his hands at such a speed that created sparks in the air, and Lily flinched despite Raiden's control, and Ant could feel his stomach being torn apart. In one second Ant was half-conscious, three-quarters dead, and he couldn't feel anything except for the tips of his fingertips and his tongue. Even those feelings began to fade. He began to say the words "Damn you," But his mouth could not move. Lily's arms vanished into lines of burnt bones, and her eyebrows raised, but they healed instantly. Ant somehow healed his right arm, a golden glow emanating from his wounds before sealing up, and he threw a strong punch in the direction of Lily's face. Raiden didn't see it coming. He did not dodge Ant's punch. Raiden faltered in mid-air, and he let Ant fall.
He twisted mid air, his broken legs flailing like ropes. Using his right arm, the only thing that could be moved on his body, he softened the landing by propelling him upward with the same strength as falling down. It created a giant crater in the rocks below the snow, but he had survived. He quickly repaired his legs with a power he didn't know he had. Raiden fell into the snow on both legs, softening his fall with giant wings made out of electricity. Lily had holes in her hands and each one held a miniature glowing sun.
"Running out of fragment." Raiden muttered.
Ant hatched a plan. He would just stall until Raiden had to use 100% of his fragment and had to recharge. When he was defenseless, Ant would attack.
That was the original plan.
The snow suddenly stopped mid-air, and they all began to spin around like they were trapped in a tornado. Their central point–the small yellow orb in the centre of Lily's left hand. They spun around her body like shields, and then they all exploded, sending twigs and rocks and clusters of ice at supersonic speeds, tearing against Ant's skin. They did not fall down. They levitated around the two like floating landmines.
"What the hell was that for?" Ant stuttered, and his arms were bleeding badly. He swallowed the blood coming up his throat.
"It is time to stop resisting, Ant Infele," Raiden said, and he had never sounded more unlike Lily.
A flash of lightning came from Lily's hands, and they rebounded upon the floating projectiles in the air, creating a spider web of electricity, and Ant died.
Just kidding.
"That attack should've been enough," Raiden started to smile in a crazed way. "But you activated a shield at the last moment, didn't you?"
Ant was standing, his clothes were singed and his arms were crossed in an X facing Raiden. "This is beginning to get dangerous, you know that?" he said.
"It doesn't matter," Raiden said.
"You're gonna kill your incarnation!" Ant cried, flipping backwards, narrowly dodging a slice that trimmed his hair.
"I won't," Raiden gritted his teeth. "Stop dodging!" The glowing orb in Lily's palm released, and it was as if the air around Lily imploded, and Ant could feel his skin tearing off his body. He could not stop to handle the pain, because Raiden was defenseless. He jumped towards him in a position that would provide him a painful landing, and he grabbed onto Lily's face. Raiden squirmed, trying to pry off his hands, but to no avail.
The surface of Ant's palm began to burn up, and a swirling golden inferno was released from his hands. Lily's body was absorbed in the bonfire.
The snow behind Raiden melted, and when Lily's body fell to her knees, her head had been reduced to black and a gaping hole was piercing through her face.
Though he had no mouth to speak through, his voice could still be heard. Raiden was laughing.
"What was all of that about damaging this young girl's body?" He stood up. "You damn hypocrite!"
A supernova emerged from the hole in Lily's face, like the orbs of lightning between her palms, and a large circular orb was shot.
Ant dodged it. Barely.
The orb charged again and then it fired again, and the hair on Ant's head stood up as he was hit with an electrical blast. He was paralyzed in place, but not for long, as he began to move shortly after.
It was like there was a minigun in Lily's face, because the orbs became smaller, but their fire rate increased. The electrified orbs slowed to a halt in mid-air and they remained, shocking anything around them, like the rubble and sticks in an earlier attack. After many shocks and weaving, the orbs began to move again. They blitzed towards Lily's face and the yellow star in the hole in her head was growing with every impact, like it was growing from the orbs' convergence.
It charged for two seconds, and Ant realised that Raiden was open, and he leaped at him. Raiden snapped Lily's head to look at him mid-air, and then the star was released. A giant beam of pure electricity fired at him. Thirty metres wide, thirty metres tall, impossible to dodge now that Ant was mid-jump. It fired upwards, and when it hit the clouds a giant hole was produced, and an upside-down tornado appeared in the sky. The light it produced was so intense that when it reached the atmosphere, it became daytime for three seconds. The clouds dispersed, and it stopped snowing. The once snow filled plateau they stood on had become an expanse of rock.
"There's no way he dodged that," Raiden said as Lily's face began to regenerate. He stared into the dust that was made, and Ant was standing there, arms hanging, slouched. He looked unharmed.
How did he live that?
When Lily's face had fully healed, Raiden tried to fire a small blast towards Ant, and when it connected, he vanished like a cloud of soot. "A mirage!?" Raiden turned, charging an electric beam in Lily's palms, but–
"Hey."
Someone was tapping on his shoulder. Raiden had no time to turn around or to release the blast at him.
"Get out of her body."
Lily's eyes tilted into a white shade and her skin became monochrome as she levitated into the air. A network of strings appeared in the air, attached to her chest, and in the centre was a Godly Fragment, sparkling neo yellow and blue, attached to many, many wires.
"How did you know of this power?" said a disembodied voice that sounded nothing like Lily. It was so powerful that Ant's ears began to bleed.
"I didn't," Ant said through gritted teeth. He created small blades from his index finger and waved it around, attempting to sever the connections to the Godly Fragment. He clumsily cut another wire, and blood started to leak from Lily's nose. "Ah, shit," he muttered, moving his hand with extra precariousness. He did not know for how long Lily would remain in this state, floating with her vital strings sticking out, but it was clear that it was not for long. Lily's body began to shake and the strings started to vibrate, almost as if someone was playing a song.
Ant hurried to cut the last of the strings, but it was too late, as they were yanked back into Lily's chest and her colour regained; she fell into Ant's arms, and he caught her.
"Lily," Ant sighed. He rotated her body so she was facing upwards. "Lily!" he called again. He placed both of his hands on her cheeks. He listened hard, mainly for Raiden's voice or for her breaths, but he heard neither. "Goddamn it," he muttered. Ant raised his hand to slap Lily awake, but his hand came in weak contact with her cheek. "Wake up, Lily!" he yelled.
Lily moved her lips, but her eyes were still shut tightly.
Ant exhaled. It's either it was windy or Lily was alive.
"I'm trying to sleep…" she mumbled in a quiet voice. Ant couldn't be sure if she actually talked. "Don't be so loud…"
Suddenly she started to wail. "WWAAAHHH!!"
She was crying so loudly Ant had to cover his ears. It took her three minutes to stop, and when she opened her eyes. She made a puzzled expression, looking down to her nose, and then licking the tops of her lips, tasting her nosebleed. "Why am I bleeding, Ant?"
"You're alive," Ant said. He dropped Lily and she fell onto the rocks with a yelp.
"Hey!" she yelled. She looked at her surroundings. Her eyes were twitching. Is she gonna ask where we were? Ant thought. Nope. Lily stood up and brushed off her clothes; they were wet with snow. She looked at the palms of her hands which were punctured with a giant hole respectively, and she scowled, as if this was an everyday irritation. She shook her head side to side, swaying her new short hair. "I think I like this haircut more," she said.
"So you aren't gonna kill me?" Ant asked. He remembered back to the time on Earth where Lily tried to stab Ant with a knife in a way that was extremely uncomfortable for other reasons…
"Nah. I don't feel like it," Lily said, and she turned to look at the tall mountain in the distance and the giant walls. "How far did he knock you away?" she asked. Ant didn't notice–he started from the window of the penthouse all the way here, in a once-snowy plateau. "Pretty far?" Lily said. She walked slowly with a limp, and when she made it to the snow they didn't reach with their battle, she crumpled to her knees.
"I-I'm sorry," she said in a shaking voice. She was rubbing at her face aggressively, sobbing. Her mucus was leaking and she sniffed every half a second. She put her face in her hands after a while. "I couldn't… I couldn't stop him."
"He hasn't done anything, has he?" Ant said, and he walked to Lily's side.
"He… He–" Lily's crying suddenly stopped, she hiccuped once, and then she very slowly fell down. Lily began to snore.
Ant gritted his teeth. He thought about leaving her in the snow, but he wasn't that inhumane. He carried Lily in a piggy-back position, and he started to walk back to Chelsey. The sun was beginning to rise, and though the light was futile, it still helped.
It was noon by the time they reached Chelsey in the snow and it took them another three hours to get to Hotel Edgar, mainly because Ant was limping, and also because he was carrying Lily. Also because he had been awake for around a full 24 hours. A delivery van was parked outside, along with an electrician. The receptionists tried to ignore his presence and he took the elevator up to the highest floor. When he entered a drayl was standing on a tall metal ladder with a drill and a handful of copper wires and two people wearing the Hotel Edgar 'uniform' were installing a new TV. When he entered, the Drayl bowed but the employees pretended not to notice him. The window at the back, where Raiden had punched him through, was covered in cardboard and surrounded with tape. He heard a conversation in the room on the right, where Noelle and Leon were talking. He limped into their room, where Noelle and Leon were deep in a conversation.
"Yeah, but humans on Earth should be as powerful as the ones here on Mox!" Noelle said.
"But Mister Ant–" Leon's eyebrows raised when he noticed Ant enter the room. He waved, catching Noelle's attention, who was happy to see him, but didn't show such an expression when she saw Lily on his back.
"Who's she?" Noelle asked. Ant dropped her from his back onto the bed without much care.
"The most annoying person on all of Earth," Ant said.
Noelle nodded as if she knew what Ant was talking about. "By the way," her eyebrows narrowed. "Why did you blow up the TV, break a window, and then disappear?"
"I'll tell you later," Ant wanted to collapse. But he had surgery to do. Ant rubbed at his half-closed, tired eyes and breathed out slowly. Lily's back curved upwards and a white tear in her chest opened. The lights in the room flickered and a few of them exploded, to which Noelle replied by whining. The system of connected strings opened once more, and Ant could see a pair of small hands tying together more strings.
"Did you unlock a new power, mister?" Leon said with wide eyes. Noelle was pointing a shaking finger at the string amalgamation. "What the hell is that?"
"Found you," Ant said, ignoring Leon. "Still trying to take control of her, eh?"
Ant created a scissor motion with his right fingers and a giant blade made out of crackling golden electricity appeared in his hand. He attempted to stab the hands out of the air, but they weaved. Ant groaned, using his left hand to try and grab the fragment out of the air, to try and yank it out or something, but when his hand came in contact with the fragment, a large shock of electricity ran down his body, and he instinctively jumped back.
"Don't try it," said the disembodied hands. Ant could feel liquid pooling in his ears. Noelle was clamping her hands over her ears and her nose was bleeding; Leon was blocking the holes in his ears with his index fingers. Blood was trailing into his hands. Lily coughed from the bed and blood came out her mouth.
"T-that… That voice!" Noelle coughed.
Ant's eyes were blinking asleep. He grabbed onto the floating Godly Fragment in the air. It sure was painful–the electricity was coursing through his veins. Ant felt like he was going to explode. He pulled as hard as he could, but even that was severely weakened. He was blown back and the Drayl on the ladder glanced at him before pretending it never happened. The TV-installing employees had left. Ant looked at his hands. They were burnt black and bleeding. He healed them somehow, and then went back into the room. He decided this was too dangerous to continue. He whispered something unknown to even him but he knew it was right, and Lily fell back onto the bed. The string network vanished.
Noelle opened her eyes. She looked down at the palms of her hands which were filled with blood. Ant's ears were ringing endlessly and Raiden's true voice was rebounding in his mind…
"Okay, what the hell just happened?" Noelle coughed. Leon had fallen unconscious.
"I'm going to try again," Ant said.
"Are you crazy?" Noelle threw her arms up into the air.
Ant didn't answer. He told Noelle to cover her ears so that she couldn't hear anything, and then he snapped his fingers. The strings appeared in the air and the floating hands had made progress. The fragment was basically in a cocoon of Lily's string network. "Stop hiding behind those hands, Raiden!" Ant yelled. Raiden, the Monarch of Lightning. Ant didn't bother making scissors again. He cut through the strings with the side of his palm, a technique that proved reckless, as he had accidentally chopped one of Lily's vital strings and she coughed up more blood.
Why should I care if she dies? Ant thought to himself. He suddenly shook his head as if to repel the thoughts.
He had cleaved through most of the unnecessary strings and the Fragment was visible. He had an idea: what if instead of directly touching the Fragment he could use tools? The idea was so simple he was dumbfounded that he didn't think of it sooner. Ant created a small tendril from the tip of his index finger made out of a black substance that somehow glowed with gold light. It curled around the remaining strings and gripped the side of the Fragment. A yellow flash of electricity ran up his hand. Shoot. The tendril curled around the blue electric crystal, which started to shake and flash a yellow colour. Noelle was watching with wide eyes, her hands clamped shut around her ears. She mouthed the words 'What are you doing?'
This isn't working, Ant thought. He released the Fragment. What now, what now? Should he give up? Abandon Lily somewhere in the snow? Kill her so that Raiden had nobody to use as a vessel?
Okay, maybe not that last one.
Ant was stuck. He had no idea what to do, and that was very apparent with his next attempts. He tried to maneuver the strings apart with his own hands so that they wouldn't be so tight together. When that didn't work he tried to neutralize the Fragment, which, of course, failed. His mind raced for ideas. It took one hour of useless attempts to do absolutely nothing.
"I need to sleep," he groaned to himself aloud. Noelle finally took her hands from her ears. She turned to look at Leon, who was still asleep on the bed where he fell. His ears were plugged with fabric ripped from Noelle's jacket. "Hey!" she cried. "Don't sleep now!"
Ant's vision wobbled. How long had he been awake? He needed to rest. Even if it was just for a few seconds. In his last moments of waking he thought of an idea… one that had been shown to him a while ago.
He fell backwards onto the carpet.
"I didn't expect you to be here, Ant Infele," said a tall man, taller than Jikoku. His hair was long, mostly blue-coloured with some strands of yellow. His eyes were blue and yellow, one of them, Ant could see both at the same time. He wore a white suit with extremely long coat-tails and his tie was blue, faintly flickering with yellow electricity. His pants were of the same colour as his pants. A pair of giant wings were on his back, created by the outlines of yellow lightning.
"That's what you really look like?" Ant chuckled. "...Raiden?"
Raiden was sitting on a lawn-chair in the middle of a field of black grass. The sky was a black, almost as if they were floating in a void. The only light in the large expanse was the glowing golden Fragment that had appeared on Ant's chest, the blue Fragment on Raiden's, and the small pieces of paper hung in the air, levitating, each of which were connected by tight white strings of varying lengths. Raiden had multiple strings attached to his Godly Fragment, and Lily's body was floating on top of all of it, connected to most of the pieces of paper. She wasn't wearing her school uniform but a flawless white dress.
"Get out of here," Ant muttered.
Raiden ignored him. "I take it you've remembered my Dream Invasion tactic from a while ago?"
"I can defeat you here, right?" Ant yelled. Raiden glanced at him warily. "The you I'm seeing now is only a Godly Fragment. Probably less than 0.1%, right?"
"Less than 0.1% of me can overpower you any day of the Lunar Cycle," Raiden said. He stood up from the lawnchair, tightening his tie. He sighed loudly, as if disappointed, and he made a slicing motion with his hands. Ant's body split in half and then he woke up.
"How was the two-second sleep?" Noelle asked. She was staring at the ceiling.
Ant grumbled, falling unconscious once more.
"Are you back again?" Raiden said. He raised his hand to perform the same attack, but this time Ant dodged. He repelled the ground from his feet, slide-tackling the chair below Raiden, which shattered. The ground suddenly turned into an electrical net, and Ant somehow landed in-between the net.
"Ooh, lucky," said Raiden sarcastically. The net's holes shrinked and Ant's feet were cut off. He winced before realising things didn't hurt that much here. He healed his feet as he threw a right hook at Raiden's face. Raiden took a single step back and dodged the punch. Ant landed on the ground, using his left arm as a pivot for a sweep kick. He missed again.
"Stop dodging!" Ant spat.
"Stop missing," Raiden replied. He raised his leg and stepped on the back of Ant's head. "Go wake up."
Ant's eyes flashed open. He swore, slapping his own cheek. He fell asleep again.
"That's the face of someone who's died three times in a row," Raiden chuckled. "Let's make that four times."
Raiden tilted his head back, stroking his hair, as if he was thinking hard.
"What are you gonna do now?" Ant said. "I've got your attack patterns memorised!" He looked at the strings connected to Raiden's Fragment. There were at least three times as many as the first time.
"Aha!" Raiden's eyes lit up. "I've got it now."
"Got what?" Ant created a finger-gun and a small orb of fire was produced from the tip of his finger. 100%.
The fire orb turned into a giant beam of flames, a tornado of blazing heat directed at Raiden.
"Cool down," said a voice beyond human comprehension. The fires vanished instantly. Ant's ears were ringing. The same thing as before? He was stuck covering his ears as Raiden materialized as a flash of lightning, moving at such speeds he basically teleported behind Ant. With one palm to his back, Ant exploded into a pool of blood.