The guardian tilted its crystalline head slightly while Finn's green essence roared to life around him.
Then—he vanished.
A cloud of rusted dirt shot upward where he once stood.
The guardian's wings rustled, its gaze scanning left and right before spotting him,
Finn dashed in looping arcs, zipping across the battlefield faster than the eyes could process. Rusted dust and fragments of essence trailed behind him in spiraling ribbons of emerald and gold. The guardian didn't bother to move, merely observing his acceleration with eerie patience.
While zipping around, Finn's hand reached behind him before shooting forward.
Dozens of eight-pointed blades screamed through the air towards the guardian, but as they neared, not a single one hit.
The guardian's expression didn't change. It didn't even bother shifting its weight in preparation to dodge.
But then, it saw something right next to it. Something most wouldn't notice in the heat of the battle. There was a faint twinkle.
A paper-thin metallic string gleamed in the red sun.
Its black eyes widened once it noticed it was just next to it, but all around its body.
Thin metallic threads strung taut glittered through the battlefield like a spider's web, connecting every shuriken's path. They boxed the guardian in like a glittering cage.
Finn stopped sliding across the dirt holding up a handsign—his fingers interlocked, index and middle fingers pointed skyward. One end of the wires looped tight around his fingers, the other gripped between his teeth.
His chest swelled.
"Blazing Stream Jutsu!"
A torrent of green fire erupted from his lips, racing along the threads. The flames split and twisted, slithering like serpents along the trap, erupting into a swirling inferno around the guardian.
The flames howled and the smell of molten iron and scorched earth filled the sky.
Moments later, Finn's eyes snapped open mid-breath. The twelve golden fragments of his pupils in both eyes glowed brightly like a full moon at midnight.
He cut the flames, jumping straight up high into the air.
The ground where he had stood ruptured and a massive crystal spike upward right where he stood.
While suspended in the air, his eyes glowed once more. He weaved another handsign sign and took a deep breath, his chest swelling far more than before.
"Roaring Gale Jutsu!"
He shot out a single blast of wind the size of a boulder that tore downward before colliding with a volley of crystal shards erupting from the firestorm below. The wind knocked the crystals mid-flight, scattering harmlessly around the battlefield before extinguishing the flames.
The guardian stood there in the same spot, completely unharmed—no char, no cracks, nothing.
Finn hit the ground hard, rolling to one knee. Sweat dripped. Blood smeared his lip. His breath trembled… but his right eye rotated.
Each golden fragment turned clockwise as a whole.
click.
click.
click.
In the guardian's vision, Finn's body sputtered like he was a program on a computer glitching out.
The next instant, Finn's foot slammed into its face.
The creature rocketed backward, carving a long trench in the rust-red soil. It didn't move for a full second, trying to process what occured. But Finn wasn't going to give it that time.
Reality around him again.
CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—CRACK
Blows hammered the guardian from every angle.
A heel into ribs. A fist burying into its gut. A kunai grazing its cheek as he spiraled past. A backflip kick snapping its jaw upward. It seemed endless.
The guardian skidded across the battlefield, rocks and dust exploding in its wake.
Its vision shook—glitches in space, rewinds of frames that never existed.
It tried to track Finn but found only air. It couldn't see him… But it heard him.
"Don't… Blink."
Above the planet, the licensing station fell into a suffocating silence. Ari'Va pressed her trembling hand against the holo-display, eyes wide, pupils quivering like they were being electrocuted. She muttered—barely audible.
"…three… affinities?"
Her voice cracked.
"Flames… wind… and earlier he used a light based ability—"
Her heart hammered against her ribs like it was begging to escape her chest.
"And that level of essence control and manipulation… he's raising his CPI during attacks and dropping it back down immediately to conserve stamina and essence in the heat of battle. That kind of focus—"
She gulped.
"—that's something you'd only ever see in experienced B-ranked star travelers… or possibly even low A-rank."
She looked over to a miniature stat display next to the main holo-monitor.
Finn: 120,000 - 400,000 CPI
Guardian: 1,200,000 CPI (stable)
"He's finding openings… with that much of a difference in CPI?"
Her throat tightened.
"The guardian is pushing high B-ranked with its essence level… and Finn is in mid-high C at best. H–How is that even—?"
"That boy…" Astra's calm voice finally cut through the disbelief drowning the room.
"…look at his eyes."
Ari'Va whipped her gaze to the image of Finn on-screen. His brown irises were gone and now replaced with a deep green. And his pupils…
"…twelve golden segments… it's like they're making a vortex." She whispered.
"That's not the only thing." Astra added.
Her lower set of eyes narrowed, the upper pair scanning patterns invisible to everyone else.
"Watch carefully. Observe his gaze… right before the guardian attacks."
Ari'Va did as instructed and noticed something almost immediately.
Finn wasn't looking at the guardian. Instead, he was looking half a meter to the left, off into dead space before darting to the side.
"What…? Why would he—?"
SHRRRIIIIIIIK
A violent blast of jagged crystal spears sliced through the air from the exact location Finn was staring at, missing him by a hair.
The image of his body glitched and he reappeared behind the guardian, kicking its knee inward.
Ari'Va's breath caught.
"…he's predicting its attacks?"
"No." Astra corrected instantly.
"Prediction on that scale requires frantic processing which in turn causes fear, panic, hesitation. Those are things the body shows naturally. Especially the eyes. Nothing stays still inside a mind bent on guessing fate."
She leaned closer, voice dipping low as if revealing a forbidden truth.
"But his eyes? They are calm. Too calm. He isn't predicting…"
Her four eyes gleamed.
"He's seeing."
Everyone in the control center froze as every green-skinned attendant slowly turned to her in perfect sync, fear and awe merging into one emotion.
"What you all are witnessing is a welder of the true cosmic affinity of time."
Silence detonated in the room, but she continued.
"That glitching you're all witnessing…" She pointed lazily at the screen with her long smooth finger.
"…that's likely him skipping forward in time. Sliding through the cracks between the frames of reality."
Ari'Va covered her mouth, stumbling into her chair.
"T-Time manipulation… That's… That's one of the twelve original affinities… And arguably the rarest of them all."
"Yes." Astra cut in.
She analyzes Finn's projection as he continues to dance around the guardian's attacks.
"And he wields it while still practically a child."