The images on the screen are coming from multiple worlds, but they all tell the same story: war.
Cities in flames, ruins of crashed spaceships, civilians running from plasma blasts raining down from the sky. Despite her prodigious mind, Noriko Null can’t process what she’s witnessing.
She’s in the Zenith headquarters, where the Vanguard has completely surrounded the team assembled by Ulysses. In this pocket dimension, the monitors are the only window to her universe.
<You’re… you’re lying. Leral can only accelerate time, not…>
<You can learn a lot in accelerated time. One hour ago for you was five years ago for me; thanks for the increased lifespan, by the way.> the Lampyrian says.
<I’ve never needed any of her predecessors to expand the powers of the Chronal Accelerator, Null, but you forced my hand. Now that I think about it, we should probably change its name.> Ulysses thinks out loud, while Noriko is concentrated on the rest of the Vanguard.
They’re completely frozen in place: Leral must have slowed down their time to a crawl. Now that she can take a good look at the Lampyrian, she can see some tiny signs of aging… a little wrinkle here and there, but it’s a lot for a member of her species.
Worse than that, both Genius Guns disappear from her hands, courtesy of Skorpios and her power to manipulate space at will.
<I know why you’re doing this, Ulysses.> she says, trying to buy some time.
<I highly doubt that.>
<You think that Ares won’t attack the Mortal Republic if it’s already at war.>
<You’re wrong, Null, I know that Ares won’t attack: he’s far too powerful to involve himself in a mortal war without ending it immediately. The last six months have proven me right.>
<How many people have died during the civil war?>
<Far fewer than would’ve perished at the hands of Ares. I have seen what happens when his bloodlust is unleashed; you can’t comprehend the amount of horror he can bring.>
<You’d be surprised by what I can comprehend.> Noriko boasts, her silver eyes shining.
Ulysses manages to keep his composure even when looking straight into them.
<If there’s one thing that all Nexus users have in common, it’s arrogance. You have been fighting this battle for six years, Null. I’ve been doing this for over three thousand years, not counting the effects of the Chronal Accelerator.>
<You think that’s impressive? I’ve outsmarted gods billions of years old. And the fact that I’m still alive proves that you still need me.>
<Does she need to keep her tongue to be useful?> Skorpios asks his boss, giving a look to Null that further highlights how much she dislikes her.
<Throw her in the dungeon. Keep the others in temporal stasis until I decide what to do with them.> Ulysses instructs his lieutenants; Skorpios grabs Noriko’s arm, with a lot more strength than necessary just to take out her frustration.
<Wait!> Noriko pleads.
Ulysses instructs Skorpios to let her speak, just with a slight nod.
<I’ll concede that you’ve outsmarted me. But please, just answer one more question.> she says.
<Very well. I still don’t consider you an enemy, Null, so I hope this will convince you to cooperate. Ask me what you want.>
<Do you know how fast tachyons are?>
Ulysses is confused by the question, then he notices something: a blinking light on her watch.
What he can’t see is that it’s not only emitting light, but a signal that the watch is sending to the Soul Relay she installed inside Quantum’s head.
From Quantum’s point of view, time has stopped almost completely. Almost, however, isn’t enough to stop the device from instructing Quantum’s brain to transform his body into tachyons.
As soon as he does that, Leral’s time manipulation is completely negated by how unfathomably fast his particles are now moving.
He hates taking this form because of how difficult it is to control; he can’t do much damage like this, but he’s not going to throw away the opportunity.
Before Leral can try to accelerate herself to match his speed, he returns to his human form and knocks her out with an uppercut. She may be a cyborg, but she still has a glass jaw and goes down.
Without Leral, the rest of the Vanguard is now free. And they outnumber the Zenith.
<See, Ulysses? It’s not arrogance if you can back it up.> Noriko tells him.
Kari creates six duplicates to completely surround Skorpios. Torn is holding two swords of Blood energy and is ready to attack Ulysses at the first chance.
Vesta moves away from the Zenith to liberate Helen of Troy from her cage, but she’s still holding a fireball in one hand and she’s ready to throw it at anyone trying to stop her.
<Let’s not drag this out, Ulysses. You should’ve known you’re not in my weight class.> Noriko tells him, drawing a spare Genius Gun from her belt.
<Boss?> Skorpios asks, looking at her leader, with her eyes moving from one adversary to the other and formulating a strategy.
<You should not have antagonized me, Null. You just threw away centuries of careful planning; now I’ll have to start over with the next Nexus host. Skorpios?> he calls, looking at Null in the eye.
<Extreme force is authorized.> he concludes.
<Finally!> his enforcer gleefully responds. Her eyes turn completely black and the circuitry beneath her skin glows as she accesses her Drylon device.
The first thing she does is teleport Leral away from the battle; immediately after, just when the Kari duplicates attack her simultaneously, she warps space to move their organs outside of their bodies. Fortunately for her stomach, since these are just duplicates they simply pop out of existence instead of suffering an extremely gruesome death.
Her other target is Vesta, who she teleports away with herself in the blink of an eye.
Torn attacks Ulysses, trying to cut him in half with his swords; much to his surprise, Ulysses is able to grab them without any injury.
<You should really study some Soul Control. The Blood doesn’t work on me.> he calmly explains, easily breaking the swords. Kari is able to take advantage of his stance, with one duplicate grabbing each arm.
<5K Rise!> each duplicate shouts, dividing the power of the 10K Rise between the two bodies, far exceeding the strength of any single human.
<I can’t believe I looked up to your legend when I was growing up!> one duplicate says.
<What the Hades happened to you after the Odyssey!?> the other wonders.
<Kid… the Odyssey never ended. SOUL DISTRUPTION!> Ulysses shouts, replicating Viper’s technique: Torn can literally see Kari’s soul being severely damaged, forcing the duplicates to disappear. He has to admit that Ulysses is a far more versatile adversary that he anticipated.
<Cut of a thousand deaths!> he adds, unleashing a stream of deadly Blood daggers towards Ulysses.
The target reacts by spreading his arms: before they can touch his body, the daggers stop in mid-air.
<I told you these won’t work on me.> he boasts.
<I know.> Torn replies, emerging from a pentagram behind Ulysses: his Blood attack was only a distraction, and now he’s about to punch Ulysses with enough strength to kill any normal human.
To his surprise, Ulysses manages to dodge it; he’s never seen any human being able to avoid his attacks in hand-to-hand combat, with the exception of Kari.
Not only Ulysses is able to use Torn’s momentum against him to throw him off balance, but he also didn’t drop the Blood daggers he gathered.
In fact, he even manages to redirect them towards Null, who has been ignoring the battle completely to work as fast as possible on the nearest computer.
<Look out!> Quantum warns her, moving next to her at the speed of light and returning to human form just in time to push her away: instead of killing her, the daggers hit and destroy the computers and screens in the room.
<Thanks for the save. One more second and I wouldn’t have had enough time to send the message.> she says, trying to compose herself; she’s trying not to show it, but it was a really close call.
<What kind of message?> Ulysses asks, keeping an eye on Torn who is eager for a second round.
<You have a fleet surrounding this outpost, don’t you?> Noriko asks.
Then everything shakes: the building was just hit by a massive explosion, closely followed by more and more of equal power.
<I just ordered every single one of your ships to fire at your own base. Next time, maybe don’t train your soldiers to obey you without questions, okay?> Null asks with a cocky smile.
On a planet at the edge of the Galaxy
Vesta is extremely disoriented. She doesn’t know how she arrived here, or even where “here” is.
As soon as she was outside of the pocket dimension, she found herself in the middle of a desert when an entire mountain was dropped on her head.
Now she emerges from the pool of lava that until a few seconds ago was just an immense debris field; her body is surrounded by a fire burning at a million degrees.
Even when an entire glacier appears above her it’s not enough to extinguish her flame, but the vast amount of steam generated is making it hard to see anything.
<Is this what “extreme force” looks like to you?> she asks, moving her arms so fast that when she claps the shockwave generates enough pressure to blow away most of the steam.
Now she can see Skorpios, sitting on a pile of rocks; she’s next to Leral, who is fanning herself with her wings. Despite Vesta’s immense control over her power, she’s still making the atmosphere unbearably hot.
<Couldn’t you have taken the others too?> Leral chastises her colleague.
<No unnecessary casualties. I’m not a psycho like Vector.> Skorpios responds.
<Why are you following Ulysses? What’s in it for you?> Vesta asks.
<Freedom and revenge.> Skorpios answers.
<Mostly revenge. Do you want this one, Skorpios? I just want to kill the brown-skinned one.>
<I’ll leave her to you. I don’t trust leaving the boss alone for too long.> Skorpios says, disappearing to leave Leral alone with Vesta.
<You have nothing to gain from this. How can you oppose Null? You’re a Lampyrian, your kind owes an enormous debt of gratitude towards her!> the goddess pleads.
<Do you know who Elytra was?> Leral asks.
<Elytra Elater? I haven’t heard that name in years… she was the space pirate who helped us defeat Hephaestus. How do you know her?>
<My full name is Leral Elater. Elytra was my great-grandmother.>
<That’s… that’s not possible. Even with the Lampyrian lifespan…>
<She wielded the Ghost Maker, like every Elater for generations. Her daughter was supposed to inherit the Ghost Maker and join the Zenith, but Null destroyed it when she killed Elytra.>
<That’s what Ulysses told you? Your great-grandmother sacrificed herself to help Noriko kill Hephaestus and save the Galaxy!>
<Forcing my people to worship her, like they worshiped the gods who forced my kind into slavery. Ulysses gave my family the Chronal Accelerator to free ourselves from human oppression… once the Olympian Galaxy is free from divine rule, we will simply outbreed them.>
<You were born in accelerated time. That’s how Ulysses was able to create his fleet so quickly!>
<And now that I know how to slow down time as well, it’s going to be even easier to defeat the gods. I suppose I should be mad at the Vanguard for forcing me to lock myself in a room for five straight years to train myself how to slow time… but now I have the chance to make a test run.>
Those are the last words that Vesta can hear: from her point of view, Leral vanishes instantly.
<I wonder how she plans to hurt me, since she can’t freeze me forever and she can’t make me die of old age.> Vesta wonders, then she looks up: the sun of this planet just changed color.
It’s now orange. And it’s growing larger and larger each second.
<Oh cραπ. She didn’t age me. She just aged the Sun… it’s going to blow!> Vesta realizes.
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