Although detrimental, one great thing about rewriting realities was the simplicity of lying to oneself, while forgetting everything that comes after.
Division 'X' discarded their differences and followed Zack, who kept flickering out of existence, unable to sustain consciousness across three realms at once.
"Forget." Lux snapped his fingers, snatching away every onlooker's memories.
"Forgive." Pinky bowed to each of them in guilt—only to make Lux erase their minds again moments later.
"Fuck off!" Psycho's constant sneers and curses tripled Lux's workload.
"Stop bothering the old man," Bazuka muttered, loading her cannon-sized weapon and pointing it at Psycho—who, by all mortal standards, was still a kid.
"He-hee!" Lux tried to shield the group with his flimsy body, walking with a grace that defied his fragile appearance. "Says the one carrying a *'reaking bazooka!'" He yelled at Bazuka without even opening his mouth. "No! Don't make a weapon twice your size vanish into thin air—wait, why would you bring it back?"
As Lux kept changing his mind, a confused Bazuka kept summoning and dismissing her weapon.
"Make up your mind, old timer. Geez!" She said, loading and blasting their leader to kingdom come. "What?" She glared at the public, making them scurry away.
"You know!" Zack ended his search, glaring at the group—his eyes literally turning into daggers. "We do more harm than good."
"Huh!" Psycho waved him off dismissively. "We do it to keep ourselves rooted."
"Yeah!" Everyone except Zack agreed in perfect chaos.
"Another point for you to add," Zack muttered to Lux's reforming body. "We're here."
He pointed toward a bustling mall.
"Plans?"
"Upon you," Lux said, forming his mouth first, while his body still knitted itself together. His focus split as he added yet another warning to the record for future recruits. "Laws don't change—only our approach does. Run any loopholes by me first, though. Epiphany Land isn't always correct when the laws of the Soul King come into play."
"Gotcha." Zack waved them off. "All of you only draw attention. And weirdly, we don't have a recon specialist."
"We used to," Bazuka said, covering Pinky's ears.
"Wait!" Lux drew his artifact from within his Sub-Space.
Zack wasn't sure how to interpret the thing. It looked like a flame that kept shifting between the seven layers of reality.
"Boy, I love this part of Sani." Lux snickered. "Stand around," he ordered, dropping the ever-shifting flame.
The artifact released a wave of runic circles that surrounded each of their souls across all layers of reality before solidifying beneath their feet.
"Defense?" Lux asked Zack.
"Got my shield—that I can't share."
"Not even now?" Lux frowned at his artifact, disappointed.
"Don't think like that," Zack said, trying to cheer him up. "Think of it like… my parents being supreme geniuses who made a superior artifact."
"Geez, I'm all sunshine and rainbows now!"
"Good." Zack grinned and gave Lux a thumbs-up.
"Keep your worthless emotions on!" Lux snapped, slapping away Zack's hand before vanishing with the group.
Zack contemplated the advice for a second—which played over and over again for hours within his core—before shrugging it off as Lux's malfunction and following the energy discrepancy between the seven layers into the mall, where he spotted his target sitting alone in the food court.
The rest was a blur. He wasn't sure if holding onto such a memory was worth the effort. In short: his carelessness—or perhaps his overpoweredness—gave him away in under a mortal minute. The only upside? The target's mortality.
They called themselves Gifted—or mutants—something self-righteous along those lines. They claimed to be the good guys, attacked him unprovoked, and called him evil for being "overpowered." A minute later, they were kissing the alleyway pavement, still taunting him about their "leader" being busy elsewhere.
"Was it fun, beating up a dozen helpless mortals?" Psycho asked when Zack returned.
"There were twelve? Huh." Zack looked genuinely guilty.
"At first," Pinky snickered. "Then the ones they actually came to fight showed up—and you ended up clobbering forty delinquents."
"Their leaders are still fighting," Lux said, pointing toward another alleyway, his sight slipping through the walls like they were made of mist.
"Are they at least strong?" Zack asked hopefully.
"Nope." Bazuka burst out laughing, joined by Psycho and DJ. "How do you feel after beating up a bunch of infants?"
"Don't worry," Lux said, barely holding his laughter back. "They're so weak it's hard even to evaluate their power levels."
"Console your face first." Zack snapped, storming off—accidentally creating a literal storm that blew the leaders apart.
"He did it again!" Psycho howled with laughter until he choked on air.
Zack used the lingering link from Lux's artifact to switch off everyone's emotions in one pulse before declaring. "Found another."
"That was uncalled for," Psycho hissed.
"Would you rather be attacked first?"
"Yes!" Psycho spat.
"Noted."
A family cowering behind the dumpsters wasn't sure whether to laugh at their antics or cower again from the monster who'd just appeared without a ripple—human in shape, demonic in deed—shredding mortals like paper.
"Whew." Bazuka whistled. "Must be on the precipice of breaking into Flicker." She whistled again as the behemoth ripped a six-foot man in half with his bare hands. "And he'll probably die the moment he touches it."
"A once-in-a-millennium talent, squandered by incompetence," Psycho sighed.
"Yeah, because being 'too broken' is totally a thing," Zack muttered—then realized everyone agreed with him. "Okay! Now what?" He half-glanced at the trembling family. "I get it's pointless to interfere, but we can't just leave like this either."
"Dig deeper," Lux said, already walking away.
Zack wasn't the first self-righteous brat to try to fix the world. Eons before the Soul King's first law, another Broken-Soul had done the same—solving mortal problems one by one until he became their god. Mortals, being mortals, turned to devotion, imitation, rebellion, and war. His end birthed the so-called *Gifted*, and later, they reached higher, becoming *Soul Snatchers*.
Whether out of hope or boredom, the Soul King kept giving chances to those who wished to "make the world better." However, the result was always the same: wars, myths, false gods, new laws, and an increased need for Enforcers.
Every 'good' act ended in catastrophe.
Yet here was Zack, staring at a family begging for his help.
He was about to teleport them away—but paused. Logic won. He peered into their memories and saw the truth: crime lords, human traffickers, slavers. Their wealth was built on suffering.
"I'll give you anything you desire!" the mother pleaded, clutching his feet.
"Can I whistle?" Zack asked.
"What!?"
Zack whistled, making the behemoth aware of the family, then teleported away with a huge grin.
"Thank King, he's also not crazy enough," Lux sighed in relief.
"You should use more than your eyes to see someone's true colors," Pinky said, frowning. She erased the memory before anyone could ask more questions. "Why are we sneaking around, Zack?"
Lux, not wanting another debate, changed the subject until Zack rejoined them.
"You're getting better at tracking," Lux praised Zack on his arrival.
"It's nothing worth celebrating—but good job," Pinky added, patting Zack on the back and sending him flying into a wall. "Oops! I forgot to lower my strength. Sorry!"
Lux inched away from her, realizing the punch was meant for him but delivered to Zack because of the memory wipe.
"Can't blame someone who doesn't remember," Zack groaned, his limbs mangled and bones protruding. "Another training regime to test how fast I can switch off pain?"
"That's the dumbest thing I've heard in eons," Psycho muttered—then smirked. "But a must-have."
"Boom!" Bazuka laughed, blasting DJ's top half into oblivion.
"Pillow fight!" Pinky cheered, unleashing chaos.
———<>||<>———End of Chapter Twenty-Four———<>||<>———