For a moment, the cracked orb hung still, as if listening to nothing at all. No light, no sound—just the stubborn tremor of fractured geometry trying to hold itself together. Fissures along its skin jittered with tiny sparks, like nerves in a dying creature. Riko flexed, the fingers knuckling against the floating data slab beneath him. Kaze shifted only a fraction, weight settling, stance tightening. The calm in his eyes felt like a warning to Riko's stomach, a slow backward flip—like Kaze had seen what was coming and wasn't thrilled.
Then the orb jerked.
Once. Twice.
A pale, flickering hand pressed against the inside of the cracked shell.
Riko's breath snagged. "Nope. Nope. NOPE. That thing had hands? Since when did it grow hands?"
Kaze said nothing.
The orb pulsed again—harder this time—and the shell pried open wider. Something inside wriggled, like a creature clawing to escape a cage that was too small. The hand pressed again, fingers stretching, bending, distorting, snapping back into new shapes with every flash of light. It wasn't a full hand. Not even a real one. Data lines formed and dissolved around it like a hologram rendering at one frame per second.
The cracked orb groaned.
Pixel dust shed from its surface.
Another arm emerged, this one twitching with a reckless energy, as though whatever was emerging couldn't settle on a form.
Riko swallowed. "Is. is that thing supposed to look like that?
"It's trying to," Kaze said in that cold, flat tone. "It's using the fragments it stole from your data to build a body."
"A body based on me?! Fabulous. Amazing. Beautiful. Terrifying. Kill it."
Kaze exhaled through his nose, the universal sign for acknowledgment without actually saying it aloud.
The creature inside the orb gave a low, static-laced hiss. The rest of its torso pressed halfway through the shell, but it didn't settle cleanly. It flickered between shapes-tall, short, wide, thin-like it was scrolling through body presets and failing to lock one in. Every few seconds the model snapped, as if it were loading bones that didn't exist.
It wasn't a monster.
It wasn't human, either.
It was a halfborn imitation, contrived out of stolen fragments, like a corrupted character stuck in the loading screen of a video game.
The arms stretched, then shortened, then stretched again; a shoulder glitched backward, then reappeared in front. Its torso elongated into a silhouette that almost matched Riko's height, then split into three frames before taking on something vaguely humanoid.
But where were the legs?
And so was the head.
It dragged itself out of the orb, with arms and half a chest formed, and its lower half trailing in a broken pixilation. The orb rolled away, empty, leaving the creature thrashing about almost like a glitchy newborn.
Riko stumbled backward. "Kaze, that thing is using MY data to create THAT? That isn't even flattering."
Kaze's gaze remained fixed. "It's incomplete. It didn't pull enough from you to finish the model."
"Oh, great," Riko said. "So we're dealing with a half-charged nightmare baby."
The creature jerked, its head flickered to life for a split second—it looked like Riko's silhouette—but it collapsed back into pixel fog. It tried again, but the second attempt handed only a jawline before melting away.
It slammed its palm-if that was what a shapeless, glitching limb could be called-against the ground. The floating platform shivered as ripples of corrupted code spread outward like cracks on water.
Kaze raised a hand before Riko, without turning. "Don't engage until it stabilizes. Hitting it too early might speed up its evolution."
"Wait—evolution?!" Riko exclaimed. "As in evolving ME but… worse? Evil Riko versions?"
"Exactly".
"WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT SO CASUALLY?"
But Kaze wasn't listening anymore. He watched the creature closely, measuring how fast it distorted. Its torso flickered, stretching upward then collapsing inward. The outline kept returning to something like Riko—shoulders narrow, frame familiar—but every half-second the resemblance fractured as the data wobbled.
It crawled closer with uneven, spasm-like movements, each limb phasing through the platform before reconnecting. It wasn't walking, wasn't crawling. It was glitching forward, teleporting inches at a time like a corrupted ghost.
Riko stepped back. "Okay, so it can move. Great. Fantastic. Love that for us."
The creature hesitated.
Digital static buzzed from deep inside its chest.
It rose a touch, torso lifting though nothing seemed to support its lower half. The shapes which would form hips flickered into two frames before vanishing. A line of code like a spine appeared, bending backward in an awkward arc as it settled into a crooked, glowing pattern.
A chill slid into Riko's joints. "Kaze… it's looking at me."
"It would," Kaze replied. "Its entire purpose is to hunt the user. And you're the only one it has data from."
Riko shivered. "Why can't it hunt you instead?!"
"Because it didn't copy my data." "Great, love that for me." The creature twitched again. Its torso expanded, glitching in and out as if breathing for the first time. A portion of what could've been its face flickered on: two hollow pixel sockets and a jawline made of broken squares. They sharpened for a moment as if an image were clearing, then shattered back into static. It extended an arm toward Riko. Not quite an arm-more like a sketch, an unfinished drawing someone tried to erase but didn't quite. The sound it made wasn't a growl or a scream. It was a warped, reversed echo of a voice which wasn't fully formed yet. Then the creature's half-face snapped into place, long enough to form a line of pixels in the shape of a mouth. In a distorted, broken, too-familiar voice, It whispers: "User… found…"