Without a sound and unbound by the laws of physics, a hooded figure emerged from the greyish-red vortex. A vortex conjured by the hooded figure’s supernatural powers was unexplainable even by the best minds of the North before their assimilation into the technological hive mind. The figure wore a long dark-blue coat, covering its body from any visible exploitation. The long fabric engulfed the figure’s arms, not revealing an inch of their skin for anyone to figure out their hidden identity.

  Kairos looked up from bottom to top, noticing the figure had worn a mask, the one thing obfuscating his superior sensory abilities to perceive who this familiar person could have been. The mask’s design featured a modernistic take on art–the sour cruelty of minimalism and secrecy etched into it. Was it a final act of defiance toward the North’s historical horrendous taste in art? Or was it simply…something else? He had an odd feeling that this hidden art form left hints for the initiated on the owner’s identity.

  A white mask.

  Three sloppy salmon-pink painted lines symbolising the wearer’s affiliation to a specific bloodline forming a big “S”.

  It was as though the hooded figure intended for someone to know they still lived.

  The figure raised its left arm methodically from under the long hood. Kairos reactively entered a combat stance, swinging his rifle towards the firing position, ready to unleash a barrage of shrapnel on this hostile element. He knew he lacked the luxury of time to explain the threat level of this hooded figure and the esoteric symbolism adorned by it to his allies.

  However, he was puzzled at his adversary's calmness. Instead of an offensive manoeuvre, the figure snapped its fingers, causing the vortex at its back to dissipate into thin air, triggering his batchmates, who stood behind him to gasp in awe. The sound of tidal waves retreating into the great seas as the vortex started to transform, like how the vortex appeared without a trace, disappeared similarly.

  “It’s…gone.”

  “Who is that?”

  “I wish I could answer.”

  “And what was that?” Anastasia bit her lip in annoyance. She had a tough time digesting what she witnessed.

  The figure stood as a solemn monk against the United Atlantea Federation’s soldiers, surveying them curiously. Yet, it still spoke nothing, choosing to hold its tongue for some unknown reason. If anyone were a betting man, the twenty-plus soldiers would have decimated this figure in a heartbeat, for there was a sizeable group advantage.

  Moments passed where nobody dared make a move. Even the Ascended did not move an inch as though permitting the Federation’s soldiers to make their first move, graciously giving them the first mover’s advantage. As the sole combat-trained officer, Anastasia knew the onus was on her to create a plan to deal with this hostile element.

  “Ma’am, your orders, please.”

  “Everyone, be on your guard,” Anastasia commanded her recruits while maintaining a combative pose. She then turned her attention to Boris. “Dr Pavlov, you think you can evacuate with the injured recruit?”

  “Now? You want me to execute an evacuation with that thing over there?!”

  “We have to take a chance.”

  “I can do that, but,” Boris couldn’t take his eyes off that figure, wondering if escaping was even possible, “Fine, I’ll do it.”

  He knew it was all or nothing, for the recruit under his care would be beyond the brink of resurrection if he hesitated any longer.

  “Medical Corps, follow me. We are evacuating to carry out medical procedures for Recruit Bray Rotunda.”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  The Federation’s soldiers did not notice that the figure had anticipated this very move they would make. Lifting its left hand again, it snapped its fingers. With all the wind in his feet, Kairos dashed forward upon catching the snapping motion, trying to safeguard the medics from potential harm.

  What?! Nothing happened?

  Kairos became puzzled when nothing had happened to the Medical Corps. They had successfully reached the exit of the fields and were leaving the vicinity.

  Something is going on.

  Until it finally dawned upon him.

  “What?!”

  “No way…!”

  Like a broken radio singing the same tune, the Medical Corps appeared next to where Anastasia had last interacted with them. Boris didn’t know what was happening as he ran to the exit with his team, only to return magically to the same starting spot.

  Again.

  And again.

  Like a pendulum swinging back and forth to no end, the Medical Corps repeated the same movement for the tenth time. Finally, on the eleventh time, Boris screamed out for help.

  “Help! Someone help us!

  The combat medics, with their contorted faces, didn’t know what to do. Their bodies were moving at the same pace; though they didn’t tire, the mental stress of watching their actions for the eleventh time started to take its toll. They found themselves stuck in a simulation where it never ended. Back and forth. Back. And forth. A dimensional loop like a broken radio record.

  “Someone, save us!’

  “Ah…”

  Anastasia’s body froze as her mind wondered if this was possible: an Ascended who could manipulate the fabric of space to create an infinite prison loop.

  “W-what…what should I do?”

  The petrified angel mouthed to herself as she wondered if she should bless the Medical Corps with mercy by ending their lives with a swift, merciful metallic kiss–

  “Anastasia, don’t you dare!” Kairos growled at Anastasia upon noticing her shaky movements, not wanting her to make a rash decision without considering every possible out. “I know you were thinking about it–don’t!”

  “What else can I do…”

  “We can think of another countermeasure.”

  Kairos knew she contemplated ending the lives of the Medical Corps, freeing them from their infinite torment in the incessant prison.

  “I don’t know…I’m sorry for my incompetence–”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’m useless. I can’t fight. We can’t fight…” Anastasia did not want to admit it. “...None of us stands a chance–” Her expression changed into a miserably painful one. “–Except for you.”

  “I need all of you to provide me with backup,” Kairos said, placing his hand out. Anastasia instinctively placed a loaded magazine into his hands. “This is the real deal, huh?”

  He gazed at the live rounds within the magazine in his clutches, wondering if it was sufficient to deal with a rogue Ascended with an equally, if not more devastating ability.

  “Wh-What…are you planning on doing?” She feared Kairos had taken it upon himself to do the unthinkable.

  “I’m going to fight.”

  “No!”

  “This is the only way.”

  “You can’t fight that person alone!”

  “I’ll buy time.”

  Even Anastasia knew he was lying as she crumbled to the ground, her voice quaking to the point of utter despair. “Buy time?! I beg you, Kairos…Do not leave me…Just wait, ok? Your uncle–”

  Where was the help? Would it come on time? Kairos knew no other alternative.

  “Please, don’t make this any harder for me–”

  “Let me do it! I am your commander!” Anastasia tried to snatch the loaded magazine, but Kairos’s grip was far too tight for her to release. “Please! I can’t lose you!”

  “I can’t lose you, too.”

  He knew no other option after she resorted to using her rank.

  “...Don’t go.” Anastasia’s voice bordered on the edge of collapsing to her darkest thoughts–her fear of losing him in this manner. She placed her hands on Kairos’s strong, muscular hands, unwilling to submit her loved one to death’s door.

  “Believe in me.”

  Breathing in slowly, she calmed her nerves down and looked him deep in his eyes.

  “Recruit Black.”

  “Ma’am.”

  “Survive. That’s my only order. Survive until General Temporean arrives.”

  With a silent prayer to the heavens, Anastasia released her grip on the loaded magazine, guiding it toward Kairos’s chest. Both hands were locked on his chest, creating a highly charged emotional grip on their souls.

  “I trust you…”

  …And please come back to me.

  As Anastasia and Kairos locked eyes, the loaded magazine entered his rifle’s chamber, ready to engage in a duel between two Ascendeds.

  Anastasia swiftly turned to face her recruits, commanding them with newly found vigour.

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  “Batch 77, support Recruit Black from the rear! Recruit Black will lead the vanguard while you lot will secure the perimeters.”

  “““Yes, ma’am!”””

  She stared at the Temporean soldier who seemed to have readied a magazine of real bullets, unlike the dummy rounds she knew the wannabe soldiers had practised with during their pathetic field camp weeks ago.

  There were two objectives in this mission.

  The first was to observe the United Atlantea Federation until the first signs of distress.

  And the second, rescue the Temporean, who lost his birthright when the time was right.

  Somehow, the heavens have aligned; the location she teleported into placed her in arm’s reach from the estranged Temporean, who now lived as a nameless individual sent to the gallows to die.

  With a heart filled with sympathy for this bureaucratic mess known as the United Atlantea Federation, she groaned from within the confines of her mask.

  “I didn’t know Two-Face’s soldiers could be this weak. Let me buy some time while Zeus has his fun.”

  She placed her hands behind her, wanting the estranged Temporean to fire the first shot. She had plenty of time on hand to play with her food.

  “My fellow kin, show me the powers bestowed upon your family by the Founder!”

  *

  The lone commander stood alone, a solitary unit against the terrorists who took the lives of his precious recruits. Turning to his right, he saw a pile of human flesh in all shapes and sizes. Turning to his left, he saw a handful of his recruits barely alive from the damage inflicted on their mortal bodies. Soon enough, they would fade to dust, succumbing to the limits of their measly human existence.

  “Why is it happening again?”

  As though to curse the heavens for dealing another merciless blow upon him, Troy screamed out in agony. Today held a special significance to the recruits graduating, a milestone they had passed as newly minted soldiers of the Federation. Yet, the cruel hand of fate had robbed them of this glory.

  A group of hostile elements, terrorists that descended from beyond, arrived to ruin a momentous milestone in the Federation’s short history as a nation, a day that had the potential to mark a new era turned into an Atlantean nightmare for those involved.

  He smiled wryly, beginning to laugh like a senile elderly plagued with dementia, remembering that short moment of happiness, like a father celebrating the achievements of his children when he led Batch 123 from the front in the march. The final moments of his memories as a proud OC flooded his mind as judgment day slowly approached with the terrorist footsteps nearing him.

  “Sing along, Batch 123~!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Troy started singing the customary marching song, “Purple Light”. A song he had sung during his days as a novice soldier alongside his fellow volunteers in the Swan Contingent years ago. As per tradition, the lyrics and tunes had their rites passed down from one class of soldiers to the next, ensuring the unity of marching, from the sequence to the tempo had a steady rhythm.

  “Repeat after me!”

  “Repeat after you!”

  “Purple light In the valley!”

  “Purple light in the valley!”

  “There is where I want to be!”

  “There is where I want to be!”

  “Infantry, Close companion!”

  “Infantry, close companion!”

  “With my rifle and my buddy and me….”

  “With my rifle and my buddy and me….”

  In his heart, he had prepared to send them off to the next phase in their military careers, wishing the best for them. He then noticed something odd in the distance, why were the spectators leaving?

  Lifting his head to the private boxes the senior officials occupied, he saw them leaving in droves, which meant an emergency evacuation was underway. Troy convinced himself that nothing terrible or out of the blue would happen. All the soldiers had joined the parade to march to their hearts’ content as the euphoria of graduating had set in, turning the sea of green into a cauldron of ecstasy.

  Eventually, even the guests had evacuated the stadium. Regardless, he had to carry on the march as a proud senior officer, to exemplify and wear the proud honours of an infantry officer for the world to see, even if the audience had left!

  For the show must go on! Even if nobody is watching, the soldiers must finish this–

  A loud sound started erupting from the back. He quickly dismissed the sound of fragmented metal piercing something malleable, akin to flesh absorbing a swift, puncturing blow as it melded into one unified product, downplaying it as unworthy of his attention.

  He chose the path of obliviousness, ignoring the unmistakable sound of gunfire, even as its cruel scent entered his nostrils. He continued marching, singing the marching song to carry on the tempo. He assumed it was a daydream and nothing more.

  “Repeat after me!”

  Nobody repeated after him and the trumpet stopped blaring.

  “Purple light in the valley!”

  Nobody sang after him, too. Next, the drums that beat according to the ceremony’s tempo stopped beating.

  “There is where I want to be!”

  The symphonic tune had ended. The marching band’s sole existence was to inspire and fill the hearts and minds of these soldiers with a rhythm worth marching to. The clarinet, with its mellow tune, had paused indefinitely.

  That was when Troy acknowledged this reality.

  The heart and soul of the ceremony had ceased to exist. With that, all he saw was scrap metal raining down the once-green field, covering it in crimson red.

  Nobody was marching because they were all spread eagle on the fields. The once-green landscape of grass freshly trimmed by the lawnmowers had turned into a red sea of tantalisingly freshly squeezed fruit punch. Nobody was laughing or singing anymore. Only the distinct sounds from the firing of tiny shards filled the solemn atmosphere.

  Still, he refused to acknowledge the scene before his eyes.

  “Stop being lazy! Carry on marching!”

  The recruits had all fallen like flies to the grass fields, their contents spilling out from their bodies and joining the bowl of fresh fruit punch beneath, altering the colours to an even darker, redder tone.

  “Come on! Batch 123, get up! I command all of you…” There was no response, only silence, apart from the occasional sound of shrapnel tearing through a living person from somewhere Troy didn’t care. “...Get up!”

  “...Sir…Help me.”

  He heard a plea nearby, spurring him to address that familiar voice.

  “...Bronston! Why are you–”

  Bronston’s body had suffered the misfortune of being split into two, the contents spilling out of it and joining like a Megazord into the fruit punch basin beneath. The warped circumstances Troy faced made him panic like the pathetic soldier he had always been.

  “Sir…Help me…”

  Help? That was the last thing on his cowardly mind.

  “No…”

  Overwhelmed by what transpired, he staggered backwards and fell to the ground. The food he consumed for lunch launched from his stomach like a ballistic missile’s launch procedure, changing a small portion of the fruit punch beneath him into a rainbow.

  “No…” The last thing he expected was to see this nightmarish scene again. But life had to be cruel to him again. “...Somebody, help me.”

  He begged for help as he heard more distinct gunshots ringing in the distance. He could no longer deny the gunshots as mere background music anymore. Now, the sounds of the recruits' final moments played like a crescendo, buzzing like flies, in his ears. As the only living human narrowly spared from the slaughter, he heard those cries. The lamentations of the recruits who never wanted to fight on the battlefield, let alone march like idiots under the hot sun.

  “I don’t want to be here–”

  “Shut up.”

  “Why–”

  “I said shut up.”

  “Mom! Help me–”

  “I said shut up, didn’t I?!”

  “Ah, it hurts! It hurts–”

  “I said–”

  “Shut up. All of you. Water parade now!”

  Nobody responded to his call.

  “Knock it down, ten!”

  Even if some still lingered between the twilight of existence, they had since lost their will to move their bodies. How could anyone attempt a push-up with their bodies in that state?

  Roleplaying was all that he did. All the stories he shared. The gutsy persona the recruits loved about him. Troy had played the role of a senior officer, an Officer Commanding to perfection. His acting had reached stellar performance levels until he convinced himself he could fight on the frontlines.

  “...I am no soldier.”

  As death knocked on his door, Troy finally admitted his weakness. Lucky for him, his tale of inadequacy would get lost in history as there were no witnesses. He knew he couldn’t fight. All he knew was to run like he ran to save himself fourteen years ago.

  He had enough of this nonsense. What had he done to deserve this fate–not once, but twice? How could a man like him, a proud volunteer in his youth and now a noble officer of the Federation, do to invoke the wrath of the heavens? He knew the gods above would send down a mighty being to save him again.

  “...Please, someone save me.”

  Unexpectedly, his call for help received a thundering response.

  A greyish-red vortex opened up in the fabric of reality, as a hooded figure with a long dark-blue coat stepped out. Salvation arrived as a masked figure looking down upon Troy with unspeakable disdain.

  The figure wore a white mask with a nimbus pattern to show its affinity with the powers of thunder and lightning for the world to witness again.

  The mysterious figure spoke nothing. Instead, it shifted its focus towards Troy’s back, unleashing two rods from under his coat, swinging one into the skies above. Within a split second, thunderclouds instantly manifested where the rod hung in the skies from its mystical weather manipulation abilities.

  With his buttocks firmly glued to the bloodied fields, Troy stared at the mystical formation in the skies as though he had seen someone rise from the dead.

  It finally dawned upon him who this person was.

  The rods multiplied into a thousand copies of themselves as they turned yellowish-white, landing on the crimson sea. A thousand rods started emitting sparks as the figure raised its other rod, generating a giant field of electricity as it roasted the terrorists with the white-hot artificial lightning.

  The bodies of the terrorists fell into the sea’s depths one by one. Like marionettes having their strings cut off, followed by loud thuds. The impact razed the perpetrators beyond their pain receptor limit, causing them to become motionless instantly. In less than a second, the terrorists caught in the lightning web had received a fate much more merciful than the soldiers suffered when their collective bodies joined the fruit punch.

  No weaponry. No panzer tanks. And not even scrap metal fired from a barrow. None of these tools of modern warfare could compete with the Artifact the saviour possessed in its arsenal.

  “Spashiong, absorb all of it.”

  The vortex began to absorb the motionless bodies like a giant vacuum cleaner before closing up. The saviour then turned its attention toward Troy. Without muttering a word or revealing its face, Troy could sense the intensity and loathing it had toward him.

  Troy knew who it was subconsciously, but chose to discredit it. Acknowledging his identity would render the past fourteen years a lie–his entire tenure as a soldier as a fabrication.

  “...Time to go.”

  Standing up, he attempted to make his way out of the stadium, not wanting to involve himself with the affairs of the dead. All he had to do moving forward was to report the incident to the higher-ups, which, to him, concluded this minor setback in his illustrious military career.

  As he did so, a distinct bolt of white lightning flashed ahead of him–

  With his authoritative tone ingrained since birth, he called out to the coward he saved in a commanding voice.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  He jumped from the invisible platform where the vortex vanished, blocking the coward’s point of retreat. For fourteen long years, he had waited for this day when he could get revenge on the man who abandoned him and his sworn brothers on the floating island.

  But the coward didn’t hear his words. He did not even acknowledge his gracious deed of saving him. Instead, that ungrateful idiot diverted to a new path toward the exit, oblivious that he had rescued this lesser being.

  Grabbing his rod, he pointed it at the coward who wore the rank of Captain. How this fool earned his last rank made him dizzy with anger. He spoke emotionlessly, without a hint of emotion, as though the past decade had turned his soul grey from the accumulated anguish and suffering he had endured till now.

  “I am talking to you.”

  “Oh, you there! Thank you for saving me!”

  Troy woke up from his stress-induced sleepwalk to address the person calling out to him. He continued feigning ignorance until the hooded figure swung his rod–

  Suddenly, a thousand rods flew towards him, forming a multi-layered prison structure with no room for escape. Akin to a legendary layered butter cake from the lands of Azea, the saviour created an electrical prison web with both men trapped inside. There was no room to hide anymore as Troy was forced to admit who this person was.

  “Y-you should have died fourteen years ago!”

  “Sounds like you’re genuinely surprised.”

  The saviour spoke with a voice full of deep-seated hatred, as though he had patiently waited for this day for far too long, for the roof on the lid of his emotional fuse was about to explode violently. He slowly removed his mask in one fell swoop, unveiling the face underneath. As the jet-black-greyish hair poured out, Troy started gasping uncontrollably as though he had seen a vengeful spirit.

  “C-Captain?!”

  The saviour turned toward Troy with his undisputedly handsome face, something he hoped his son had inherited.

  “It’s been fourteen years, Troy Graves.”

  Troy fell backwards, attempting to make a mad dash for safety, which he knew would be fruitless. Any further would have meant he met his end by electrocution by the electrical web created by one of the Artifacts uncovered on that cursed island. He couldn’t believe his eyes, for he now came face to face with the commander he abandoned fourteen years ago in Ex-Captain Andrew Temporean of the Swan Contingent.

  Also known as the legendary call sign Zeus himself.