Gear Stop

Right as Hikari asked that question to Alex, there was a loud noise underneath our feet and the ground violently shook back and forth as something clicked.

Hikari, however, didn't move. She stood in place perfectly while everybody stumbled around her.

She turned her head back and I bolted toward that weapon that could take my life easily.

The barrel started to line up with my head and I ducked right under it.

The weapon jerked backward and I could see the barrel illuminate in fabricated light, shooting out that tiny bullet that I was supposed to be worried about.

It went right over my head and instead hit Shike in the chest.

Shike couldn't absorb the energy in time and it went straight through on the left side of his chest, probably no more than three inches from his heart. I could see strands start to heal his wound, and purple ones illuminate his forearms.

He set them on the floor and launched energy out of them, pushing the ground up right underneath me, and launching me into the air on an incline. Hikari tilted the gun upward toward me, and then her eyes started to dart around.

While time felt like it was moving in slow motion, Asoh ran up behind Hikari with her palm raised, striking in the same pattern she did when we fought.

She missed a few in the beginning in quick succession, by Hikari's shoulders and the middle of her chest.

Hikari tried to back up, but with the ground raised behind her from Shike's strike, she hit it and stopped.

Asoh landed the strike in Hikari's stomach, twisted her body, hit her twice in both shoulders, and then one right over her chest.

"JERTACHI!" Asoh screamed out.

Hikari dropped her weird weapon and it vanished into strands that disintegrated into the ground. Asoh crouched and turned around, acting as a foothold for Chi-Chi's advances.

Chi-Chi planted her foot into Asoh's interlocked fingers and she was launched almost ten feet into the air to my surprise.

She held up a triangle formed with her fingers and opened her eye widely within the center, fixated exactly on Hikari's position.

"SYSTEM LOGOUT!"

"KATACHI!"

The two simultaneously screamed out and upon observing the two, they both fell to the ground at almost the same time, but the elevated wall behind Hikari had a hole in the shape of a triangle behind it.

Shike emerged from the hole in the ground right behind Hikari's fallen body, and Chi-Chi was sprawled out on the floor from falling ten feet without bracing herself.

"What the hell was that?" Shike asked, flipping Hikari over and binding her hands together.

"The Katachi Style, have you heard of it?" Asoh asked, putting her hands on Chi-Chi's throat to examine a heartbeat.

"Did Hikari kill her?! Is she okay?!" Shike asked, sliding down beside Chi-Chi to look at her.

"Katachi is an attack that permanently lowers your capacity for Essence Strands... Chi-Chi just used it like it was nothing?" Alex asked next, standing beside me.

"Chi-Chi doesn't have any downside like that to Katachi, but she does fall unconscious afterward... It's complicated, but she can barely even be considered a human," Asoh vaguely said.

"We will not skip over that. What are you talking about, barely a human? What is she, a bird?" I asked Asoh with an annoyed tone.

"An Arkian. I'm sure you're familiar, aren't you Charlie? Chi-Chi was from The Charred Isle... it's not my place to tell, but she's an Arkian with the capability of using both Essence Strands and Regular Strands. She can repair her capacity for both with the opposite. That's why Queen Ultima wanted her so badly," She finished, picking Chi-Chi up and moving toward where Boo went with Genesis.

"I'll hold her. You take my weapon and fight him if need be," I told Asoh.

"I thought you wanted to kill him really badly. What changed?" Asoh returned a question to me, which was understandable from what I was muttering the whole time I was in captivity.

I didn't respond, only looked down at Chi-Chi while I stood up with her in my arms, then looked back at Shike.

"You got her mouth shut too?" I asked him. He nodded, ripping his sleeve off and balling it up. He put it in Hikari's mouth and tied it so she couldn't speak, holding her over his broad shoulders and nodding toward me.

"An Arkian... that's so odd," Orion muttered. He had been relatively quiet the entire encounter, and only spoke up for a slight moment.

"You don't have any questions about what you just saw? None of this stuff was around on The Isle... and you're okay with it?" I asked Orion as we moved toward the middle of the collapsed walls.

"This isn't really my time, is it? Things were primitive with me, and I can't do any of the stuff you can. I'm just a fighter, and that's okay with me," He said.

What was happening to that old man? He wasn't anything like the man he used to be.

"And Alex, what was Hikari talking about?" I turned to him next, and he shook his head.

"Don't let her confuse you. I don't want to betray the group, but I did believe in what Ullr said on the beach during our first day. Only because I was too afraid to get my hands dirty myself. Out of all people, you should know that Hikari and Genesis want to deceive you, right?" Alex mentioned. He made a good point, and I stopped questioning him after that.

"That's right, I can't trust her... now, which way did Boo go? Why can't we hear anything? With her moving that fast, we should be able to hear the sound-barrier breaking, right?" I asked Shike since he had the most experience.

"In theory, sure... but after what Hikari said, is Boo even moving past the speed of light? It might've been a lie this entire time..." He said with an unsure tone. Hikari had planted more unrest into our group before she fell unconscious.

"Don't believe that. Something must've happened... let's just keep moving," Alex muttered.