Listen to: Aimer — "Brave Shine"
You ever get the feeling you're stuck in the middle of a boss fight you weren't supposed to survive? Like, the devs just threw you into it for the drama, not because you're actually meant to win?
Yeah. That was me. Right now. Bleeding out on what used to be a city street, with my ribs trying to escape my chest and my lungs doing their best impression of a clogged engine.
Void Chain floated above the crater he'd dropped me into, black hole field warping the air, the ground, and basically every law of physics in the area. The bastard looked untouched. No bruises, no ruffled hair, not even a scratch on his villain-chic outfit.
"You were saying something about rewriting inevitability?" he called down, voice that smug kind of calm that only people who think they're already won can pull off.
I spat blood onto the cracked pavement. "Yeah. Give me a second to stand, I'll rewrite your dental records too."
My body didn't want to cooperate, but I forced it. Super Regeneration was doing overtime patching me up, but the damage Void Chain could inflict wasn't the kind that healed easy. Every time his singularity fields grazed me, it felt like reality itself had taken a bite out of me. Flesh healed. Existence? Not so much.
But I wasn't out of tricks yet. Not by a long shot.
New Order Rule: "For the next five minutes, damage taken is stored instead of applied."
A warmth rippled across my skin, the rule locking into place. Pain vanished. Injuries paused. My body's protest went silent like someone hit the mute button. I'd pay for it later, sure. But I'd deal with 'later' if I lived that long.
Void Chain tilted his head, sensing the shift. "Oh? Another rule. Let me guess. Invincibility?"
"Not quite," I grinned, muscles relaxing as the burden lifted. "Just letting the debt pile up."
His eyes narrowed. "Interesting."
And then he moved. Or rather, the void moved. Reality twisted like it was wringing itself dry, and the space between us folded, snapping him forward at impossible speed. I barely had time to react.
But I didn't need time. I had Overclock.
The world stretched, slowed, my thoughts cutting through the lag like a hot knife through butter. I shifted weight to my right leg, coiled Fa Jin into my muscles, and kicked off the crater floor. The world snapped back as I launched out of the kill zone.
Void Chain's hand carved through the space I'd just left, the black hole field erasing everything in its path. Asphalt. Dirt. Air. Gone.
But not me.
I reappeared above him, already mid-strike, storing kinetic power into my limbs with every heartbeat.
This fight wasn't over.
It was just heating up.
The instant my boots hit the fractured rooftop, the city stretched and twisted around me like a funhouse mirror on a sugar rush. Reality felt slippery — not just the ground, not just the air, but the rules. The kind of slippery that meant someone, somewhere, was breaking them. Hard.
And I had a pretty damn good guess who.
Void Chain.
I felt the gravitational flux before I even saw him. The pressure warped my lungs, squeezing my ribs like some cosmic boa constrictor was trying to see how many atmospheres I could take before something popped. My instincts flared, the cocktail of quirks running wild through my bloodstream like they were fighting over the steering wheel.
Overclock surged first. Perception shattered and rebuilt itself a thousand times a second. Every blink became a lifetime.
I spotted him — hovering like a damn demigod over the crumbling skyline, black hole aura lazily swirling around him. His expression was the same unreadable, half-bored look he'd been rocking for the entire fight.
"You're still breathing?" he called out, voice oddly calm. "Impressive."
I rotated my shoulder, where bone had already cracked and sealed twice over in the last hour. "You say that like I haven't made a career out of ignoring common sense."
Another gravitational pulse punched the world around me, the pavement folding into itself like wet paper. I dodged sideways before the spot I stood on became the center of a new crater, kicking into Jet acceleration and skimming the collapsing zone by a hair's breadth.
This was starting to get fun.
My mind was running faster than my body, and my body was running fast enough to make physics file for early retirement.
Every shift of Void Chain's fingers, every tilt of his head, every micro-adjustment in that stupidly ominous black hole field — Overclock parsed it all. The margin for error was zero, and I was skating the knife's edge like it owed me rent.
But here's the thing about pressure: you either crack, or you sharpen.
And I? I sharpened.
Jet's thrusters howled against the air as I blasted sideways, snapping my legs into a low slide under a fresh burst of gravitational collapse. The moment I cleared the zone, I triggered Fa Jin, letting loose the stored tension in one blistering snap that launched me straight at him.
Void Chain moved this time. Not fast. Precise.
The black hole aura around him flared into an irregular lattice — like a spiderweb woven out of singularities. Each strand a micro-event horizon, ready to erase whatever touched it from existence.
I should've flinched. I didn't.
New Order was already locked in.
New Order Rule: "No spatial distortion can alter my trajectory until I reach my target."
I shot through the gaps, the web folding and twisting but never quite catching me, like I was the one place reality couldn't touch. His expression cracked — barely — a flicker of surprise beneath that void-born calm.
My fist was already cocked back, muscles hardwired for the strike.
This was gonna hurt. For both of us.
And I couldn't wait.
The hit landed.
And for once, the universe didn't immediately bend around Void Chain's will to bail him out.
A normal punch? He would've shrugged it off, reality or not. But this wasn't normal. This was an all-you-can-eat buffet of quirks: Fa Jin's stored power, Jet's terminal velocity, Muscle Augmentation's brute force, and a sprinkle of Impact Recoil for flavor — all served in one beautifully condensed package aimed square at his ribs.
The shockwave ruptured the air like a depth charge. The concrete under us liquefied from the sheer kinetic backlash, spraying upward in slabs of molten street as the buildings quaked on their foundations.
Void Chain went flying.
Not his usual calculated teleport, not his fancy space-folding shuffle. No, this was good old-fashioned Newtonian violence. Cause and effect. He soared backward, black hole aura sputtering like a dying star, and crashed through what remained of a parking structure.
Steel snapped like dry spaghetti. Dust plumed into the sky. Silence.
For a second, just one blissful second, the battlefield didn't feel like it belonged to him anymore.
I lowered my arm, letting out a slow breath. The adrenaline was still there, thrumming like an engine in my chest, but the hard part wasn't over.
Because if there's one thing I've learned fighting top-tier monsters, it's this:
They only stay down if they're dead.
And Void Chain?Yeah, no way was he that easy to kill.
Dust swirled through the air like ash after a nuclear fire, and I stood there, muscles tense, waiting for the punchline.
No villain worth their edgy monologue goes down on the first knockout. Especially not one who treats black holes like party tricks. My senses were still cranked to eleven — Overclock whispering time-stamped breakdowns of every shifting sound, every displaced atom.
And then I heard it.
A low, guttural sound.Not pain. Not surprise.
Laughter.
From the busted skeleton of the parking structure, Void Chain emerged — slow, deliberate, and still very much in one piece. His black hole aura flickered erratically, sparking and stretching like a wound that refused to clot. But his posture? Straight as ever.
"You've evolved," he said, voice hoarse but steady. "You've come far. But all you've done is make the inevitable take its time."
He raised his hand. Space around his palm shimmered like broken glass under a blacklight.
"Let me show you what inevitability feels like."
I didn't wait for the grand reveal.
Jet quirk snapped me sideways, Gearshift rewrote my inertia mid-move, and Fa Jin kicked tension through my joints like loaded springs. The asphalt behind me warped as the space I'd just occupied collapsed inward — the black hole gravity snapping the world like a rubber band.
Missed me by a hair.
I twisted in midair, arms sweeping behind me as I hit the ground in a controlled skid, muscles soaking the impact. My mind churned — even with New Order's rules skewing the odds, this was turning into a game of attrition.
And I was running out of wild cards.
But then the thought hit me:If inevitability is the name of the game, maybe it's time to cheat.
Dust swirled through the air like ash after a nuclear fire, and I stood there, muscles tense, waiting for the punchline.
No villain worth their edgy monologue goes down on the first knockout. Especially not one who treats black holes like party tricks. My senses were still cranked to eleven — Overclock whispering time-stamped breakdowns of every shifting sound, every displaced atom.
And then I heard it.
A low, guttural sound.
Not pain. Not surprise.
Laughter.
From the busted skeleton of the parking structure, Void Chain emerged — slow, deliberate, and still very much in one piece. His black hole aura flickered erratically, sparking and stretching like a wound that refused to clot. But his posture? Straight as ever.
"You've evolved," he said, voice hoarse but steady. "You've come far. But all you've done is make the inevitable take its time."
He raised his hand. Space around his palm shimmered like broken glass under a blacklight.
"Let me show you what inevitability feels like."
I didn't wait for the grand reveal.
Jet quirk snapped me sideways, Gearshift rewrote my inertia mid-move, and Fa Jin kicked tension through my joints like loaded springs. The asphalt behind me warped as the space I'd just occupied collapsed inward — the black hole gravity snapping the world like a rubber band.
Missed me by a hair.
I twisted in midair, arms sweeping behind me as I hit the ground in a controlled skid, muscles soaking the impact. My mind churned — even with New Order's rules skewing the odds, this was turning into a game of attrition.
And I was running out of wild cards.
But then the thought hit me:
If inevitability is the name of the game, maybe it's time to cheat.
I bolted into action, mentally rewriting the battlefield. My quirk arsenal wasn't infinite, but the combinations? That was another story.
First: Rule refresh. New Order Rule: 'The vacuum effect of black holes cannot affect my personal space.'
The moment it locked, the suffocating pressure eased, the fabric of space refusing to clutch at me. Void Chain's black hole aura lashed out, but the universe — or at least the 1-meter bubble around me — played dumb.
His expression twitched.
I capitalized. Fa Jin overloaded, snapping me into striking distance. Muscle Augmentation dialed up every fiber in my body, and I swung with the force of a collapsing building. My fist met his gravity field, which rippled and... held.
But it held softer. Weaker.
A second later, the black hole blinked out, as if even the void got tired of playing chicken.
Void Chain stumbled back, more surprised than hurt. "You are more dangerous than I calculated."
I grinned, sweat dripping down my brow. "And you're more predictable than you pretend to be."
He raised both hands, twisting his fingers like a conductor tuning up an orchestra from hell. Space bent around us again, but slower this time — the signs of strain showing on his face, the flickers of instability dancing along the horizon of his power.
Overclock analyzed every flicker, every twitch. I wasn't just fighting him now — I was reading him like sheet music.
The black hole flared back, wider than before, swallowing the light around us.
And I stepped forward anyway.
New Order Rule: 'My strikes ignore all gravitational distortion.'
This time there was no fancy trick, no sideways slipstreaming. Just brute force, raw velocity, and physics flipped the bird.
I charged.
And with every step, the horizon of that miniature apocalypse shrank, like the universe itself knew it couldn't cheat me out of this win.
The last meter closed.
Void Chain tried to backpedal, shifting the singularity between us. I pivoted around it like it was nothing more than a pothole.
And punched.
The shockwave split the world. Gravity inverted, the skyline twisted into Escher nonsense, and the ground under both of us shattered.
When the dust settled, only one of us was still standing.