Knox erupted through the ground, debris flying in every direction. He took only a second to look around before flying off into the horizon.
The sound of the alarm slowly vanished as he shot through the skies like a comet.
"This is too slow," he muttered to himself, his voice drowned out by the rush of wind as he pushed his flight to its very limits.
Beside him, a crack echoed as Marzette emerged with far more control. Effortlessly, she caught up to him, flying at his ridiculous pace.
"Knox!" she shouted, her voice somehow clear. "Stop!"
He glanced at her somehow keeping up with him, then scoffed, putting even more Ki into his flight to go even faster.
Unfortunately for him, she was still at his side.
"Would you just stop for two seconds and listen to me?" she snapped.
Knox ignored her, bearing down as his aura surged again. The strain on his body was starting to creep in. Clearly, leveling up didn't fix everything. But he didn't care. His body would be fixed if he made it, he could worry about the rest later.
Then Marzette slowed down a tad, but not before she said one last thing.
"You're going the wrong way."
That got him.
Knox slammed to a halt so quickly that the air around him rippled, the sudden stop enough to send a shockwave through the atmosphere. He turned to glare at her, his teeth clenched. "What?!"
Marzette came to a graceful stop, arms crossed.
Rather than arguing, Knox groaned in frustration, running a hand down his face. "Fine! Which way is which, then? If I'm so goddamn lost, help me instead of yapping!"
"Not until you explain what that was down there. You were going to kill me, weren't you?"
His Ki flared for an instant in irritation, his hands clenching as he forced himself to stay still. "There's no time for this, Marzette," he snapped. "Just tell me where the damned ship is so I can catch it!"
For a moment, she didn't move, locking her gaze on him in total silence. It was like she was debating whether to just let him flail around lost, and some part of her was seriously considering it.
Eventually, she sighed, gesturing southward.
"It's that way. But at your-"
Knox didn't even wait for her to finish. The moment she pointed, he shot off at full speed again, cutting her off mid-sentence.
"-let me finish!" she barked, but he was already too far to hear her clearly.
As Knox tore through the sky, the smirk returned to his face as he finally spotted what he was looking for. A faint speck in the distance, slowly growing larger as he approached. Even from here, he caught the faint little dots of individual pods trailing upward toward the main ship parked in orbit.
"There you are," he muttered to himself, his fingers flexing slightly.
"Did you even hear me?" Marzette's voice rang out over the wind as she caught up to him effortlessly once again. She glared at him, and although it was hard to read her expression, the tone of her voice dared him to keep ignoring her.
"I'm almost there," Knox said, brushing her off. "Look, I can see it already-"
His words were cut off by a sharp impact against the back of his head. Whatever hit him carried enough force to rattle his teeth, and he plummeted downward like a rock, spiraling uncontrollably as the world spun around him.
The hit itself did minimal damage, but the fact that he wasn't expecting it meant it sent him flying.
Knox slammed into the ground hard enough to leave a crater, the impact sending a cloud of dust erupting into the air. For a moment, he lay there, his body buzzing with residual energy, before dragging himself to his feet.
Floating above him, Marzette looked unimpressed, her claws faintly glowing as she let the accumulated Ki in her fist fade. Clearly, she had to charge that one up to actually affect him.
"Are you finally listening to me?" she asked icily.
Knox shook the dust and dirt from his body, glaring up at her. "Is this really necessary right now?"
"You weren't listening," she snapped back. "So yes, it is necessary."
Knox's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue further, heat burning in his chest as he turned his gaze skyward. "Fine. Say whatever you've gotta say, then I'm going after that ship."
The two glared at each other for a long moment, before Marzette relaxed her posture, her voice softening a little.
"Look at your hands, Knox."
His glare turned into confusion, but he listened, and noticed his hands were trembling. A subtle shake that he could feel all the way up into his arms now that he was paying attention to it.
"You're scared," she pointed out plainly.
Knox's brow furrowed, his fists tightening in reflex. "What the fuck is this lame bullshit? I ain't scared, just... excited."
Marzette only nodded. "I understand, Knox. You're terrified of being stuck on this planet more than anything. I'd hate knowing I was forever stranded from my home, too. But blind desperation can't help you here. Take your flight technique, for example. You're pumping far more energy into yours, and yet I'm still able to keep up. Why do you think that is?"
Knox flinched, before turning away and scowling at the ground.
"Look," She pointed at the ship. "I mean, really look. Do you think at your current speed you can get there in time? We're nowhere near close enough to make that distance even if you died pushing yourself to your limits. I'm sorry, Knox, but this isn't a problem you can solve by just getting stronger or putting in more energy."
For a moment, he just stood there, silent as her words sank in. His aura flickered faintly, the angry, flaring energy dimming in waves as he stared down at his trembling hands.
Marzette waited patiently, likely waiting for her lecture to sink in.
But... Knox simply couldn't accept that she was correct. Not entirely.
'A problem I can't solve by just getting stronger or putting in more energy?'
Knox tightened his fists, steadying the tremor with sheer force of will. "Who says I can't?" he muttered. Then he lowered himself into a seated position inside the crater, shutting his eyes.
"What are you…" Marzette spoke, but he blocked her out and brought his mind inward.
The world around him slowed to a crawl as [Thought Acceleration] kicked in, sending Knox's mental processes into hyperdrive.
'My [Ki Flight] skill is complete ass. She's right about that.' he admitted silently to himself. 'But that just means I have to use a different technique than mere flight. Instant transmission is out of the question, but there must be something else, right?'
His entire approach was to blast forward recklessly, relying on raw power to carry him. It was inefficient and he hated that he didn't recognize it sooner.
But Ki wasn't just raw power, was it?
For what felt like hours, though it had only truly been seconds, Knox sat there peeling back the layers of his understanding. He picked apart this esoteric energy and pondered on the foundations of it.
'Body… Mind… Soul…'
It hit him like a blast between the eyes.
His power level, his Ki, wasn't just a sum of arbitrary stats. It was a power derived from all three parts of the self, not just his brute strength.
In fact, the skill [Thought Acceleration] was a result of such a thing.
If he could separate his Ki into the parts it was made up of, it was then possible to create techniques for each of his three stats. And in such a situation, Ki would still be Ki, but it would be a different kind of Ki.
Its nature would be less destructive and more…
'Like this.'
Knox opened his eyes, the world snapping back to its normal tempo as [Thought Acceleration] faded. He raised his right hand in a steady motion, an invisible energy dancing on his palm.
The lack of weight meant that it could fly at unprecedented speeds. It meant it was able to spread itself thin over large areas easily. It meant that this power, while not having much destructive capability, could accomplish so much more.
He raised his hand, pointing it silently at the floating ship in the sky.
__________
When he shut his eyes and dropped into a seated position, Marzette tensed instinctively, ready to console him. It couldn't be easy to accept his situation, and she couldn't imagine what was going on his head.
But the sudden change in his aura froze her.
The chaos that usually surrounded him, the vicious energy she'd come to associate with his personality, began to settle into something more... quiet.
Her antennae twitched, and her own energy flickered as she tried to parse out what he was doing. The subtleties in his energy flow made no sense. It wasn't growing in power, and, if anything it was shrinking.
'What is he up to?' she thought.
Then, he opened his eyes.
Marzette stiffened when she watched his aura vanish. He rose to his feet in one fluid motion.
"What…" she started, but trailed off.
Without a word, he raised his right hand. Marzette's eyes followed the gesture, watching as he stretched his fingers outward and aimed toward the distant speck of the invader's ship ascending into orbit.
"What are you-" she tried again.
A guttural scream erupted from Knox, cutting her off.
Marzette flinched, her head snapping toward him as a pulse of pressure rippled outward from his body like a shockwave. His body trembled visibly, the veins on his forehead bulged, tracing paths across his skin. Blood began to drip steadily from his nose, smearing down his upper lip as he growled through clenched teeth.
"Knox!" she shouted, alarm lighting up her voice.
At first, she thought he was recklessly burning through his energy like a fool trying to push himself beyond his limits. But then her eyes caught something in the distance, just on the edge of her excellent vision.
Every spacecraft in the sky... staggered.
All of them trembled, faint distortions writhing across their metallic surfaces like heat haze. The pods jerked violently, falling into erratic wobbling patterns, stopping just shy of breaking their upward flight path entirely.
'I...'
And then, with another guttural roar from Knox, everything snapped.
The pods froze mid-air for a fraction of a second before slamming downward violently, as if an invisible force had yanked them back toward the planet. The tremor carried upward to the main ship, and Marzette watched in astonishment as the massive vessel began to lose altitude, its trajectory faltering.
Her eyes widened, and she instinctively pushed her energy to her eyes, enhancing her field of vision further.
What she saw made her antennae stiffen straight up.
The blurred haze of Knox's energy surrounded the ships. It wasn't a blast or a strike. She realized it was somehow impossibly thin, wrapping around them in unseen coils of force. He had... tethered them, dragging them out of the sky with what could only be described as raw intent.
"H-how are you..." she whispered, her words trailing off. One's inner energy simply wasn't supposed to do that.
As the first pod slammed back to the ground in a fiery explosion, Knox's voice broke the silence, ragged but full of smug satisfaction.
"I told ya'." He glanced sideways at her, blood still dripping from his chin as his aura continued to ripple faintly. "Your knowledge of Ki is primitive at best."
Before she could think of a coherent response, he ignited his aura again, the red-black energy crackling fiercely back to life as he shot off toward the grounded ships.
She could only watch him go, utterly dumbfounded.