Aetheral Space

Tap… tap… tap.

The Supreme was the picture of serenity as he strolled down the ruined hallway. His eyes were nearly closed, a faint smile was on his lips, and not a single scratch marred his skin. Even the UAP flag he had draped over his body seemed to have avoided the dust drifting through the air.

Albert Raise, walking just a short bit behind him, wasn't nearly so composed. His suit was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, his gait unsteady. His cane had been destroyed in the chaos back there, and it was all he could do to keep up with the Supreme's relaxed stride.

That relaxation was perhaps the most unnerving thing about the young man, Albert realized.

Outside the window, destruction was unfolding and unfolding, battle and death and ruin all making themselves known. And yet… it was as if that all existed in an entirely different world than Dragan Hadrien now. In some esoteric faiths, there were myths of things called Void Angels, beautiful beings that drifted through the dark -- spreading death wherever they went.

Looking at the radiant Supreme, Albert could now imagine what they might have looked like.

The Supreme stopped as they entered a large atrium, the entrance to one of the building's primary data processing centres. This place had been evacuated, too -- but it still hadn't escaped the destruction. Half the ceiling had just about caved in, prevented from collapsing entirely only by a few strings of metal and a miracle keeping them in place.

"You seem nervous, Albert," the Supreme said calmly. "Are you nervous?"

Albert nearly jumped out of his skin. To be addressed by this young man was an unpleasant reminder -- he was not beneath notice here. He would find no safety in mediocrity.

"Of course I'm nervous," Albert muttered, gaze flicking to the window again and again. "The events of the day… what's happened here…"

The Supreme looked over his shoulder at Albert, still smiling faintly. It didn't reach his eyes.

"What we've done, you mean," he said.

"There was no choice," Albert said quickly. "No choice at all. This isn't… I didn't make my decision on a whim, don't make that mistake. Jaime was out of control, making horrendous decisions, ruining that which he'd worked so many decades for. He was a dear friend, a dear friend… but the choice had to be made. I took no pleasure in it. I take no pleasure in this."

"You don't have to convince me," the Supreme chuckled. "Relax. Just relax, okay? After all, we're accomplices in all this."

He reached out, and put a cold hand on Albert's shoulder.

"Just like you and Pierrot were, right?"

Needless to say, Albert Raise would not live to see tomorrow.

Dragan had contemplated following through on his end of the deal with him, allying the Supremacy with the newly independent Lesser Chain, but the benefit just wasn't there. The confusion it would create simply wasn't worth the trouble maneuvering the whole thing would involve. The additional information he'd gotten on Albert's character since obtaining the Prince only made him more sure of that.

A useful coward -- and one almost fully used up. Once Dragan extracted the last of the man's value, it didn't make any sense to keep him alive. Raise would talk easily if he was captured, without a doubt.

"Now," said Dragan, releasing Albert and gesturing towards the doors to the data centre with his hand. "If you would, Prime Minister."

Albert hesitated, but that was the story of his life, when you got down to it.

"I…"

"I could just blow the doors off," Dragan offered. "But that could damage what we're here for. It's easier for you just to open it, yeah?"

Raise nodded fast, like a horse, or like a man desperately trying to convince himself he could still make decisions.

He stepped past Dragan, towards the doors --

Bang!

-- and crumpled to the floor like a stringless puppet

With that single sound, with that single shot, the Prime Minister's brains had been painted across the wall. May Miracle blew the smoke from the barrel of her revolver. She was standing right across the room, in clear sight of the Supreme, but outside of where Raise's line of sight had been.

It wasn't that she'd snuck past the Supreme or anything impressive like that. She'd just casually walked up… and he hadn't noticed her at all. That was how miracles worked.

"Oh," the Supreme frowned, looking down at Raise's body, tapping it with a foot. "Oh, you killed him. That's a pain. Why'd you do that?"

"You needed him," May said, training her gun on the Supreme's head. "That's reason enough for me, sugar."

"He's a head of state, though," the Supreme cocked his head. "Isn't that a problem?"

"It's a problematic sorta day."

"You think so?" the Supreme put a hand on his hip, strolling to the side casually -- even as the revolver followed him. "Personally, my day's going really well. Without a hitch, you could say."

May nodded to the corpse on the floor. "That ain't a hitch?"

"He dragged one of the most troublesome Nebulae out of hiding -- brought her before me alone," the Supreme replied, smirking. "I'd say I got some pretty good utility out of the old man, all things considered."

May mirrored his smirk.

"Alone?" she said.

The Supreme stopped smiling.

There was no way he could have seen or heard or felt which direction the attack was coming from, but the Supreme's instincts served him well. He vanished in a shower of blue sparks -- and a second later, the ground where he'd been standing exploded into a crater of bloody concrete. It was no longer just May and the Supreme in this room.

Forgiveness Irons, the human garbage called Nebula Ten, let out a rattling breath as he pulled his massive scissors out of the ground. It had felt disgusting for May to use her ability on a mass murderer like him, but she supposed she'd gotten some utility out of the bastard too. This Supreme was a cautious fella -- he wouldn't have let multiple opponents get this close to him at once if he'd been aware of it.

That's right. Not 'two' opponents. 'Multiple'.

As the Supreme reappeared near the ceiling, legs still fizzled away into blue Aether to grant him flight, he found himself greeted by the barrels of half-a-dozen rifle-staffs.

Down below, with May's miracle lifted, the ranks of the Maraze Secret Service pointed their weapons up at their enemy. Forgiveness Irons stood at the front, already preparing to leap up and resume his brutal attack. May whipped her other revolver out of its holster and pointed it at the Supreme too.

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There was a series of clicks -- and the rifles pointing at the Supreme let out the familiar buzz of Neverwire.

The Cogitant blinked.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, this is --"

Bang.

Bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang.

Pan watched the new arrival carefully.

It stood in the centre of the dead boy's archive, Staring straight forward, its gaze steady and empty. Like the Archivist, it had taken the form of Dragan's younger self -- but unlike its predecessor, it offered neither smug mockery nor haughty analysis. It just stood there, and stared.

Pan didn't trust it at all -- and neither did Dragan. That was exactly the reason he had stationed her here.

The line of communication between Dragan and the Prince was one-way -- the Prince uploaded information into Dragan's mind when it became useful. But the Prince alone decided when something was useful, and -- more importantly -- what was useful. It could be information about a dangerous enemy it was familiar with. It could be the instinct to flee when a conflict was ill-advised.

It could be an impulse designed to get him killed, so the Prince could move on to a more useful host. It wouldn't be the first time. That was how it had arrived here, after all.

So Pan watched carefully. For now, she was letting that information flow from the Prince as it liked. But the second -- the second -- she sensed it try to sabotage her dead boy, she'd reach out with her Aether and tell it, there and then:

"No."

She wouldn't go so far as saying that the Prince was her enemy. It was a thing. It had intent but no will, plans but no decisions. A mechanism without consciousness.

But all the same… she wasn't letting it out of her sight.

"Keep him pinned down!"

"Squad one, reload! Squad two, cover fire!"

Dragan Hadrien flitted through the air as a wisp of blue Aether, hopping in and out of Gemini World several times a second. As he moved, he analyzed the battlefield below him -- the battlefield waiting for him. He could keep this up for a good while, but not forever. Sooner or later, he would have to descend and defeat his enemies.

Better sooner, then.

Gemini World.

His movement was nearly instant now, the line of Aether he recorded himself into following the most efficient path to his destination. By the time he appeared next to one of the Maraze soldiers, he was already lifting a finger to point at the unfortunate man's temple.

"Gemini Shotgun," he said.

Gemini World, he thought.

Dragan vanished again before the man even finished falling to the ground, his upper half blasted apart.

Appear, kill, disappear.

Appear, kill, disappear.

Appear, kill, disappear.

They caught him the fourth time. The second Dragan reappeared, the massive hand of Forgiveness Irons seized him out of the air, the murderer slamming him down into the ground with all his strength. Irons raised up the pair of scissors in his other hand, blades pointed down, ready to run his prey through.

Forgiveness Irons' neural implant forbade him from using his Aether ability -- but with the strength he possessed, it was more than possible for him to ravage Dragan's body past the point of regeneration.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the last two members of the Secret Service Dragan had shot were getting back up -- the hits hadn't been lethal. Adaptive armour, he realized, as if recalling something he'd been told in a dream. The armour of the slain soldiers had transmitted information on the killing blows to the rest of the squad, allowing some resistance.

To hell with it. He hadn't wanted this fight to get too crazy -- if he could keep Raise's corpse intact, he could make use of his biometrics -- but they were leaving him no choice. Better to make things harder for himself than give the enemy an advantage.

As the scissors came down, Dragan opened his mouth and called out…

"Gemini --"

…but before he could finish the words, the ground beneath him erupted -- sending him, Irons, and the nearby soldiers flying in every direction. The moment he was free of Irons' grip, Dragan retreated into Gemini World, reappearing a moment later floating in front of the shattered window. His bright blue gaze was fixed on the hole now opened up in the centre of the room, his brow creased in annoyance.

"Seriously…?" he muttered.

Something began to drag itself out of the hole. A massive hulking creature, formed from curling bones like countless ribs, pulling itself upright with long spindly legs like those of a spider. Its body was more architectural than humanoid, shaped like a cage -- and from the top of that cage swung a severed human arm, like the tongue of a bell.

An Aether awakening. It had followed him all the way here.

NEBULA SIX

Beckett del Brainen

Underframe

Nebula of Brainen

The bone beast roared without a mouth, waves of grey Aether blasting out from its bulk as the sheer pressure of the noise sent soldiers flying.

Dragan Hadrien had only a moment to brace himself before the attack began in earnest.

The corpses on the floor -- Raise and the soldiers Dragan had killed -- twitched, their limbs flapping obscenely. A second later, the bodies popped like bloody balloons as their skeletons burst out of them, warped and stretched and sculpted by Underframe, becoming the seedbeds for a swarm of flexile bones that lashed out at Dragan. He leapt up to avoid their strikes, but the speed of Beckett del Brainen's attacks had become even more impressive in death. One of the spinal cords wrapped itself around Dragan's leg, posthumous infusion interfering with Gemini World…

…and it slammed him into the wall like a ragdoll.

For a second, Dragan Hadrien could not breathe. For a second, Dragan Hadrien could not see. For a second, Dragan Hadrien could not move.

His adversaries took quick advantage.

Dragan screamed as the bullets of the Secret Service thudded into his body, Neverwire bypassing his defenses, only his wild writhing saving him from a fatal headshot. Pan was working overtime, healing the holes in his body just as quickly as they appeared, but in a way that was only prolonging the torture. Some of the bullets were staying in his body, too, the residual Neverwire signal interfering with his Aether.

In six seconds, Dragan suspected he'd be unable to use his Aether at all.

He'd have to break out in five, then.

Forgiveness Irons was charging at him again, joined by what remained of Beckett del Brainen. May Miracle had vanished with that strange Aether ability of hers -- if she was going for a point-blank headshot, even Gemini Shotgun wouldn't be able to intercept in time. The soldiers were blasting and blasting and blasting.

He had to deal with everything at once. Nothing else for it. It was for impossible situations like this that he'd sought out the Prince in the first place.

Dragan Hadrien took a deep breath…

"Gemini Coilgun."

…and let the light loose.

Maybe I went a little overboard.

The smoke began to clear.

For this use of Gemini Coilgun, Dragan had deployed it in the opposite way to his first. Rather than striking a designated area, he had designated the area directly around him as off-limits and struck everything but that. The results spoke for themselves.

Dragan floated up to inspect his work, bone fragments falling from his body.

The room was a ruin, the wall opened up and the afternoon sunlight streaming inside -- while the smoke poured outside in exchange. Bodies littered the floor. Some were charred and broken, some intact but still -- that adaptive armour had been enough to keep them in one piece, but not alive.

Forgiveness Irons lay sprawled out on a newly formed overhang of concrete. For a moment, Dragan was worried he'd get back up and keep fighting -- but then the platform snapped away, and Nebula Ten plummeted out of sight. Someone else's problem now.

Cogitant-blue eyes flicked this way and that, searching the area… with no luck.

May Miracles wasn't here. Maybe she'd died with that ability of hers active, and that was why Dragan couldn't spot her body… or maybe she'd survived, and was waiting for a fatal opening. Dragan couldn't risk it. Right now, she was the biggest threat to him.

He raised an arm. If one Coilgun hadn't done the trick, two would surely seal the deal.

"Gemini --"

Thump.

Before the words could leave Dragan's mouth, a crimson spear appeared embedded in the floor before him -- moving so fast that it looked almost like it had teleported.

Dragan Hadrien turned his head to the left --

-- and the fist of hell forced it back to the right.