"How can you jump into action without any music, U'dope!" DJ said, pulling on various energy streams to create strings for his ethereal guitar.
!!Trum-Strum, Twang, and Bling!! DJ's fingers danced across the strings, energizing the group scattered across various realities with newfound power and drive while simultaneously infuriating the creature that dared breathe in his presence.
"A soul lower than mine!" The creature turned red. "How dare you defy my domain!"
"Don't go crying about the amount of Sub-Space under your control," DJ rapped, his voice bouncing in taunts. "'Cause it's my concept that's gonna steer your eyes left to right, flip your smile upside down, and whoop your sorry little ass all over the place."
He kept goading the creature, watching—waiting—for its energy threads to unravel. And the moment a red thread burst free, he snatched it mid-air and threaded the raging stream into the creature's audio waveform—one only visible through the Perspective of his Reality.
He amplified its rage while smothering the rest, carefully modulating the frequencies. At the same time, he reached toward Zack's trembling soul, soothing it, steadying it, and then empowering it with a different, borrowed melody.
"Like you… be strong… to hold the powers of the sun…"
The rest of the gang pounced on their prey—their amped up background music making them nearly invincible; every attack became more powerful, every injury stretching their smiles even wider... until they became the monsters.
!!BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!! Bazuka fired blanks, lost in the death metal's beats.
Meanwhile, the monster had to intercept every shell as the music forced it into a state of paranoia.
"Domain locks," Lux ordered, and Psycho handed Bazuka another unique Slot.
They had the advantage, yet they proceeded with caution, securing footholds around their prey's domain before going in for the capture.
"Safe zone is active!" Pinky confirmed.
Barbie manifested an eye in the mortal realm, noting every minute energy fluctuation. Their prey was smart enough to drag the fight into the energy realm and limit its powers to negate any changes; yet, a battle of any magnitude affected the most fragile layer of reality. This is where Barbie's eye came into play. Anyone able to spot the tears in reality would first notice the eye, get hypnotized into considering their circumstances their new norm, and continue with their merry lives; their memories would reset to default once they crossed the battlefield.
Typically, the safe zones policy had to be carried out by both parties, no matter who started the hunt, because once the Soul King gets involved, every Broken–Soul within the continent would be punished for breaking the law. This has nothing to do with who started what or who's in the right (nothing ever is—when it comes to power), and under these constraints, the Soul King's power affects the entire world, forcing every Broken–Soul to maintain reality on behalf of one another. A rule that's only broken when a Soul's existence comes into question. After all, you cannot expect a Broken–Soul to care about a mortal one before their end.
Lux was confident they would win in a few moves, and Barbie complied, taking over the battlefield under their influence, hoping the nearby Broken–Souls would do their part. She removed the pedestrians' radiation poisoning, restored their missing limbs, blocked their memories, and moved them along their mundane lives. Out of curiosity, she also checked a bit further, wishing to see other Broken–Souls carry out the moderation. She always did so, taking an extra step just to be sure. However, her group found it to be a waste of time and power; power that might cost them their lives, but if she could make up for all the times she followed her hunch and put their lives at risk, today's incident would be that day—a memory to prove her right for all time to come.
"I'm sick of managing your affairs." An old woman clad in tattered clothes spoke in a raspy voice, her eyes flickering and capturing every anomaly.
Her hands twitched and snapped like twigs as she counted the million changes occurring every second. "We have our own miserable lives to live." She said, looking straight at and into the floating eye, straight into Bazuka's soul. "Contract." She manifested a contract into Bazuka's Sub-Space. "Take your broken ass problems to another planet."
"Today's my day!" Bazuka snickered at her group, alerting them to the situation.
"Also, the day we are all going to die. Must be proud!" Psycho scowled.
"At least all of you would die knowing I was right." Bazuka snickered, glancing through everyone's sight, aware that this monster in an old woman's skin obscured its presence from them, placed somewhere above their level, yet below Zack's. That's why she chose her words wisely, giving out information that covered their entire situation. "Don't go breaking the law," she forced the old woman to rethink.
"Loopholes—loopholes!" The old woman hummed. "I don't have to anger him, to snatch what I desire." She strolled into the battle zone and extended her hand towards their prey—the simple action blocking the music and helping it to calm down. "What say we team up? This way, I never broke any rules, got to kill these pests, made you owe me one, and left the jarring cleanup duty on someone else's head. How does that saying go again? One stone—a flock of dragons?"
"Broken–Souls teaming up!" Lux taunted, his smile turning upside down when his prey accepted the proposal without much thought. "Something's wrong!"
"Aren't your broken asses doing the same?" the old woman asked, tilting her head with a brittle curiosity. The motion carried too far—a wet crack split the air as her neck snapped clean in two.
Unbothered, she reached behind herself with claw–like fingers and yanked out her own spine, the entire length sliding free in one smooth, nauseating ribbon. Vertebrae clicked together as she snapped it outward; the bony column flexed like a whip, its tip carving sparks across the ground.
Her jaw hung loose as she grinned. "Why not play on equal footing for once?"
"We are a sub-division working to maintain the king's laws." Lux used one of his pre-paid excuses without doubting its absurdity.
"More like sub—sub—sub," Pinky rattled on... "Subdivisions. So far away that he doesn't know we share the same goal, or are on the same team."
"Leave the dialogues to me!" Lux said, rubbing his forehead.
"Your domain has been compromised." The old woman stepped forward, forcing her domain to overlap.
"And I am just a pretty doll that can fight." Pinky countered Lux, stomping her feet down and neutralizing yet another domain skill.
The old woman modified and boosted the monster's domain before it could complain. Yet again, Pinky cracked her neck, diffusing the domain.
"Witch!" The old woman snarled, trying out several thousand combinations with two combinations she had, while Pinky understood and dispelled every domain the next moment they were formed.
"Mind that tongue, brat!" Pinky snarled back. "If you can't respect your elders. Drop dead." She said, stepping forward and shattering the latest domain.
"Oh!" The old woman smiled. "A domain that's meant to naturalize other domains." Her revelation forced the group to miss. "We need to become a better team!" She ignored the group and reached out to the monster, who accepted her deal.
"Lock!" Bazuka shot a cannonball.
"Concept reversal." The old woman caught and turned the cannonball into a shield that blocked all of its kin.
Psycho had many Slots, yet all of them turned into shields, blocking similar concepts from approaching her.
"Concepts don't work on her." Lux stopped Psycho from utilizing all of his hidden slots and blasted forward. "What a troublesome Slot."
Pinky teleported behind Bazuka, dipping both her hands into her purse and molding Lux's physical body in real time. Lux grew into a hulking humanoid, each step spreading spiderweb cracks across realities, while his punches shattered reality beyond repair, creating a blackhole that flickered ominously. The old woman and monster were stuck in defensive positions, their Slots holding them back from reaching the heights of a physical body.
"They cover each other's weaknesses while boosting their strengths." The monster growled in annoyance. "No wonder so many of our kind perish. Never knew teaming up came with so many perks."
"Got any friends that can help?" The old woman hopefully looked up at the monster.
"No!"
"How broken of you." She laughed.
"Have you got any?"
"I'm more broken than you, I'm afraid!" she cackled.
Without her spine to anchor her, her body folded clean in half, collapsing like a snapped marionette just as a massive area-blast roared over her, vaporizing the entire block behind her into shimmering dust.
Her torso twisted, legs bending the wrong direction as she sprang upright again, grinning with lipless enthusiasm. "Still," she said, brushing rubble from her shoulder as if the world hadn't just ended around her, "I'm not going to let something as stupid as friendship defeat me."
Lux's arms transformed into menacing scythes, his reach increasing tenfold, yet he always found himself inches away from claiming victory. "How come I haven't won yet?" He said, his eyes burning with fury, his emotions in turmoil.
"His emotions are distracting his visuals as well. Can't analyze." Psycho complained.
"Anger is power," said Pinky. "I can't separate the backlash in such a short time."
"Concentrate on sorting your remaining slots," Bazuka said, isolating Psycho before he protested. "I'm going in." She loaded her Bazuka. "You know what to do."
"Bad idea," Pinky whispered while complying with the order.
Bazuka fired straight into the ground, the recoil detonating beneath her boots and launching her forward like a cannon shell. She surged up behind Lux, aimed without hesitation, and shot him square in the back—the blast hurling him toward the duo while she climbed higher through the smoke, gaining a lethal vantage.
Pinky, meanwhile, slipped into Psycho's slot, her body thinning at the edges as she slid between dimensions. Debris passed through her like drifting ghosts as she phased, unbothered. Inside the hush of the in-between, she reached into her purse and infused a freshly molded clay toy with spirituality—the little figure twitching to life the instant reality reclaimed her.
"Hey!" Bazuka's weapons roared into life. "I'm not your plaything. Stop summoning me on your whim." The Weapon blasted Bazuka away and sprouted two legs, allowing it to stand upright. "I see... no-- wait-- I can't see." It manifested eyes all over its barrel. "Now I see." It scanned the entire area. "Dumb motherfuckers all around me!"
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Twenty-Seven. ———<>||<>———