The situation spiraled into chaos so fast that half the crowd was still processing what they'd just heard. A mummy-thin archaeologist screaming about revenge against the actual Phantom Troupe? Sure. That tracked. Compared to Rowan's corpse-like appearance, the three well-dressed passengers he was accusing looked downright respectable.
To the Nen users in the crowd, the threat was obvious. Rowan's life force was crystallizing into condensed aura spheres, dozens of them, invisible to civilians but unmistakable to anyone with Gyo active. Floating bombs. Everywhere.
To everyone else? Just some crazy professor having a breakdown near a murder scene. Peak Tuesday energy.
"Stop right there!" Security finally caught up, hands moving to their belts. They'd clearly given up trying to understand what was happening and defaulted to "detain first, ask questions never." One guard raised his hand toward Chrollo's group. "Sir, we need you to cooperate with—"
Liam didn't even see the punches. One moment the security team was advancing. The next they were on the floor, unconscious before they hit the carpet.
The crowd went silent for exactly half a second.
Then someone screamed.
"Oh god, they're serious!"
"Is that actually the Phantom Troupe?!"
"I don't care who they are, I'm getting the hell out of here!"
The viewing area became a stampede. Passengers bolted in every direction. Doors to rest cabins flew open as confused travelers poked their heads out, only to get swept up in the panic.
"Wait, what's happening?" one passenger shouted, half-asleep and totally lost.
Nobody stopped to explain.
But not everyone ran. A few brave (stupid) passengers, burly men with more confidence than sense, stepped forward and planted themselves between Chrollo's group and the exit. "Hold on just a damn minute—"
Three impacts. Sounded like sledgehammers hitting meat.
The men flew backward and crashed into fleeing passengers like bowling pins. More screaming. More chaos.
Behind the front desk, the flight attendants were trying to call for help, hands shaking so badly they kept dropping the phone.
"You... you..." Rowan stared at the Troupe members, face flushing an unhealthy red against his mummy-pale skin. His mouth worked soundlessly, like he'd forgotten how words functioned.
Machi glanced back over her shoulder, lips quirking into something that might've been a smile if smiles were supposed to look dangerous. "You're planning to blow up the whole ship anyway. Why do you care how we treat them?"
"Phantom Troupe..." Rowan's voice cracked. Blood vessels burst across his cheeks. His life force was burning faster now, more aura spheres condensing in the air, each one primed to detonate. He clenched his teeth hard enough to crack. "Doesn't matter. You're trapped here with me. We'll all go to hell together!"
The Troupe ignored him completely.
Chrollo walked through the panicking crowd like he was on a casual stroll, heading straight for the viewing area windows. Passengers scattered out of his path, tripping over each other to get away.
The crowd's panic doubled when Chrollo stopped at the window and placed his palm against the reinforced glass.
What are they doing? someone thought, frozen in horror. They wouldn't actually... would they?
The window shattered.
Wind screamed into the cabin, a deafening roar at cruising altitude. Passengers stumbled, grabbing for handrails and each other.
Rowan stared, disbelieving. The three Troupe members weren't wearing parachutes. They were just in normal clothes. They couldn't possibly be planning to—
Kortopi climbed through the broken window like it was the most natural thing in the world. His left hand gripped the window frame. His feet found purchase on the airship's outer hull. Wind tore at his hair and clothes, but he held steady, hanging off the side of a moving aircraft twenty thousand feet in the air.
"They're insane!" someone shrieked. "Somebody stop them!"
More passengers rushed forward, drawn by the commotion, making the chaos ten times worse.
In the middle of it all, Liam slipped through the crowd and positioned himself near a different window.
He extended one finger, wrapped it in aura using Shu, and pressed his nail against the glass. The reinforced material resisted for a second, then began to give way, molecule by molecule.
Pariston was watching him. Of course he was. Standing maybe twenty feet away with that same bright, friendly smile.
Laugh it up, you sociopath. We're all about to die anyway.
Liam switched to En, extending his presence just far enough to brush against Shizuku's aura. The connection snapped into place instantly.
[Make noise. Big, loud, distracting noise.]
Back at the broken window, Rowan was having a full-blown existential crisis.
This was it. The moment. He'd imagined it a thousand times, rehearsed the speech, prepared to sacrifice everything. But now? Now he had to decide. Did he detonate every bomb right now? Kill everyone on the ship, hundreds of innocents, just to make sure the Troupe went down with him?
His heart said yes. His conscience said no. His body was disintegrating too fast to care.
He stared at the Troupe members, veins bulging in his eyes, silently begging them to stop. To stay. To give him a reason not to murder everyone.
Outside the window, Kortopi extended his right hand into empty air.
An entire airship materialized.
Identical to the one they were standing on. Floating parallel, maybe thirty feet away, close enough to jump to.
"Kortopi can copy anything his left hand touches," Liam muttered under his breath, watching through a gap in the crowd. "Right hand manifests the copy. Lasts twenty-four hours."
Machi stepped up to the broken window, one foot on the frame, ready to leap. She glanced back at Chrollo. "You know how to fly one of these things?"
Chrollo considered. "Should be simple enough. We'll figure it out."
"You... you can't..." Rowan choked on his own blood. His throat spasmed. A mouthful of dark red spilled down his chin.
Shizuku received Liam's telepathic nudge and started to manifest Blinky, ready to slam it into the floor and crack something loud enough to draw attention.
But Pariston beat her to it.
He strolled forward, completely unbothered by the chaos, and stopped in front of Chrollo. That smile never wavered. "Am I really so easy to forget? What if I told you something interesting?"
Liam's nail finished cutting. A perfect circle of glass, about the size of a fist, separated from the window. He flicked it with one finger. The glass disc tumbled out into the clouds, and wind immediately shrieked through the hole.
Shizuku manifested Blinky anyway and slammed the vacuum into the floor with both hands.
CRACK.
The impact left a spiderweb fracture in the reinforced flooring. Passengers screamed and stumbled away from the destruction.
Good girl, Liam thought. Keep their eyes on you.
He extended his other hand, letting a single drop of his blood well up on his fingertip. Aura wrapped around it, a thin membrane holding it together, and he flicked it out through the hole in the window.
The blood droplet floated. Liam's Manipulation kicked in, guiding it like a remote-controlled drone. The "bubble" hugged the airship's exterior hull, sliding along the surface, invisible to anyone not actively looking for it
He pressed his palm over the hole in the window, cutting off the wind. The cabin's noise level dropped slightly, but not enough to stop the panic.
Someone pointed at Shizuku. "Where the hell did that vacuum come from?!"
Shizuku looked at Pariston, expression flat. "Don't worry. You're actually very annoying."
"Really?" Pariston's smile widened. He raised several fingers, counting off points like he was teaching a class. "What if I told you Chrollo's ability has conditions? First, he has to witness the ability he wants to steal. That's why he visited O.Zee's room this morning. Second, he has to hear the ability's owner answer questions about it. That's why he approached me. And third, all these conditions must be met within a certain time frame..."
Chrollo and Machi didn't wait for him to finish. They smashed the remaining window sections and climbed out into the open air, gripping the frame with white-knuckled hands.
In the roaring wind, they clung to the side of the ship, muscles straining, ready to leap to Kortopi's copy at any moment.
Shizuku raised her hand and called out over the noise. "I'm from Meteor City!"
Machi, halfway through her jump, froze. She turned her head, staring at Shizuku. "You're from Meteor City?"
"Yeah." Shizuku's tone was completely casual. "Goodbye."
Chrollo reached into his coat with his free hand, produced a dagger from somewhere, and flicked it across the cabin in one smooth motion.
The blade buried itself in Rowan's throat.
Rowan's already-bulging eyes went wide. His mouth opened, but only a wet gurgling sound came out. Blood poured over his lips.
Chrollo glanced at his teammates. "Let's go. Machi. Kortopi."
"Right." Kortopi started to reply, but something in his peripheral vision caught his attention.
A bubble. Floating toward him from the blind spot outside the broken window.
Inside the bubble, a star drawn in blood.
THUNK.
The dagger sank deeper. Rowan's eyes bulged further, threatening to pop out of their sockets. Strange choking sounds rattled in his chest.
POP.
The blood bubble touched Kortopi's forehead and burst like soap film.
The pentagram inside pressed onto his skin. A rose-gold mark flared to life and vanished beneath his hairline in the span of a heartbeat.
Machi leapt. She landed on the copied airship's hull with perfect balance, then spun around to check on her teammates.
Kortopi kicked Chrollo in the chest.
Hard.
"Chrollo!" Machi's aura exploded outward, threads materializing instantly. They shot across the gap and snagged Chrollo mid-fall, arresting his momentum before he plummeted into the cloud layer below. She hauled him back toward the copied ship, glaring murder at Kortopi. "What the hell are you doing?!"
Inside the original airship, Pariston glanced over his shoulder at Liam. "Shame. Looks like that man's about to die."
Rowan clutched the dagger embedded in his throat, fingers slick with blood. He collapsed to his knees, then toppled sideways.
The last spark of life in his eyes flickered out.
The dozens of condensed aura bombs throughout the ship began to glow.
Kortopi, his body now under Liam's direct control, reached out with his left hand and grabbed Pariston's shoulder. His right hand extended toward the empty air beside them.
Liam lunged forward, seized Shizuku's hand, and both of them flooded their bodies with Ken at maximum output.
Copies of Pariston materialized. Dozens. Hundreds. One after another, filling the cabin like a flood of smiling mannequins.
Beneath the forest of identical dress shoes, Rowan's pupils dilated one last time. His chest stopped moving.
A thread of cold-hot death energy tore free from his corpse and slammed into Liam's heart like a frozen spike.
The airship exploded.
Fire consumed the entire structure in an instant, a massive fireball blooming in the sky. The shockwave slammed into Kortopi's copied airship, sending it tumbling through the air like a child's toy.
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