Teleportation, when done properly, does not feel like movement.
It feels like being corrected.
Reality snaps shut around you like an offended editor, red lining the sentence of your existence and relocating the clause somewhere else entirely. There is no sensation of speed, no tunnel of light, no heroic wind in the face nonsense. There is simply a moment where the universe decides you were never supposed to be where you were—and fixes the error.
Wally Naugus adored that feeling these days.
It reminded him that reality was negotiable.
The cavern vanished mid-pulse.
The violet black corona of the seven Anarchy Beryls flared once—violently, greedily—and then folded inward, collapsing into a singularity of jagged light that wrapped around Wally's chimeric claw like a crown being slammed down onto a skull. The air screamed as it folded, pressure compressing inward until sound itself lost coherence.
The spiderlings started to scream.
Not vocally—spiders were ill-equipped for that—but through resonance. A psychic shrillness rippled outward in fractal panic, a harmonic backlash as dozens of tiny nervous systems suddenly realized the world had *changed without asking them*.
Ooma Arachnis reacted instantly.
She dropped into a low, defensive crouch as if gravity itself had spiked, drawing the spiderlings inward with a flick of her wrists and a subtle psychic command. Her body became a living bastion—dozens of tiny forms clinging to her limbs, her torso, her back—legs locking, abdomens flattening, instincts screaming **hold**.
And then—
Stone.
Cold, ancient stone.
No cavern.
No violet veins.
No breathing earth.
The smell hit first: dust layered on dust, old iron leached into the floor from centuries of bloodshed, incense burned during coronations and executions alike and never fully aired out. The air here was still—not stagnant, not dead—but *held*, like breath trapped in ritual pause.
They stood in Castle Acorn's planar throne room.
Not the ceremonial hall.
Not the public dais.
The *true* throne room.
The one that remembered.
Massive stone roots curled up through the floor, petrified remnants of pre-Cataclysm bindings meant to anchor Chaos long before Mobius had learned to pretend it controlled anything. The walls were Echidna worked stone, their surfaces etched with faded glyphs of authority and suppression—wards designed not to repel Chaos, but to *slow it down long enough to regret it*.
At the center of the chamber rose the throne.
And upon it—
King Maxx Acorn himself.
Alive.
Alert.
Smiling.
Beside him sat Queen Alicia Acorn, posture rigid, claws folded neatly in her lap as if composure itself were armor. At Maxx's right stood Elijah Alexis Acorn, no longer a child but not yet crowned—his expression calm, eyes sharp, tail flicking once in restrained anticipation.
Flanking the dais were Mary and Sir Armand D'Coolette, blades unseen but ready, bodies angled just slightly forward in the way only professionals ever managed. Near the edge of the chamber stood the court physician—a Mobian duck whose name Wally did not care to remember—already retreating by instinct, feathers puffed in terror.
No Rosemarie.
No Amadeus Prower.
Wally noticed immediately.
His grin widened.
*Interesting.*
Was it finally time for the chosen one to be born?
The seven Anarchy Beryls pulsed hungrily around him, their violet-black light crawling across the throne room like oil poured onto water. Jagged shadows fractured across royal faces, distorting them—turning lineage into masks, heritage into something thin and brittle.
"Ah, King Maxx Acorn," Wally purred, his voice echoing too many times for the space to justify. "How *kind* of you to gather the family for this little reunion."
The throne room groaned under the weight of his presence. Ancient stone protested. Old glyphs flickered uncertainly as the Beryls' resonance brushed against them like rot testing bone.
King Maxx leaned forward slightly, fingers tightening imperceptibly around the throne's armrests. The polished wood groaned beneath his grip.
"Wally Naugus," Maxx said brightly, voice carefully modulated. "It's such a pleasure—and such a surprise—to see you with *all seven* of my precious Anarchy Beryls."
His eyes flicked to the orbiting gems.
Hunger bled through.
"And so early as well."
Alicia's claws dug into her seat. Her gaze flickered between Wally's jagged grin and the seven pulsing Beryls, each rotation sending violet-black fractals skittering across the vaulted ceiling like spilled ink.
"Pleasure is subjective," she murmured, just loud enough to be heard.
The duck doctor edged backward again, beak clicking nervously as Ooma's spiderlings fanned out in perfect synchronization, their ruby eyes reflecting corrupted light.
Wally tilted his head.
The Beryls hummed louder.
"Of course, my Lord," he crooned, extending his claw in mock deference. "Though I *do* wonder—did you truly expect me to arrive empty-handed?"
The violet-black fractals pulsed brighter, their glow crawling up Maxx's ceremonial robes like hungry vines. Alicia's ears flattened. Mary's knife hand twitched. Sir Armand subtly shifted his footing, weight redistributing in preparation for violence.
Elijah Alexis Acorn leaned forward.
His smile did not waver.
It was small. Controlled.
Terribly sincere.
Wally noticed *that* too.
The seven Anarchy Beryls pulsed like captive hearts, their light licking at Maxx's face with every erratic beat.
"Now then," Wally continued smoothly, "allow me to return what was stolen from you."
He gestured.
The seven Anarchy Beryls lifted from his claw.
They did not drift.
They *advanced*.
The air screamed softly as they moved, their gravity warping local space, pulling dust and light into distorted spirals.
King Maxx inhaled sharply.
The hunger in his eyes became ravenous.
"Such beautiful chaos," he breathed, claws flexing like a starving man eyeing a banquet. "Such *necessary* anarchy."
Elijah's fingers curled around the armrest beside him. His fur stood on end—not with fear, but with anticipation.
"Then," Wally declared grandly, stepping back, "we shall all be taking our leave to the Zone of Noise for the remainder of my days."
The Beryls floated closer.
Closer.
Maxx rose halfway from his throne, restraint fraying. His breathing hitched. His pupils dilated, claws twitching toward the gems as their glow carved deep trenches of shadow across his muzzle.
"Yes," he rasped. "Give them to me—"
His claw closed around the first Anarchy Beryl.
Reality *broke*.
Violet-black fractals detonated outward—not explosively, but *invasively*—threading through Maxx's veins like liquid lightning. His laugh cut off mid-breath. His pupils dilated too far, sclera darkening until his eyes became voids ringed with sickly green light.
The other six Beryls followed.
They did not wait.
They *joined*.
The throne room vanished into white.
And white noise.
And then—
Stillness.
The world returned.
King Maxx Acorn stood transformed.
His fur rippled, russet deepening into bruised twilight purple. His claws elongated, talons gouging deep furrows into the throne's armrests as he straightened to his full height. The Anarchy Beryls no longer orbited him—they were *in* him, pulsing beneath his skin like embedded stars.
Alicia recoiled first.
Mary swore softly.
Sir Armand took a single step back.
The duck doctor collapsed.
Elijah did not move.
"I—AM—MASTER—MAXIMILLIAN!"
The throne room shook as the voice boomed—not sound, but force. Stained glass shattered. Stone cracked. The castle itself recoiled.
Master Maximillian's eyes burned red, silver pinpricks gleaming at their centers as intelligence sharpened into something cruel and vast.
"SONIC!" he roared. "YOU'RE DEAD!"
He launched upward.
The ceiling ceased to exist.
Stone vaporized.
Light howled.
And Master Maximillian tore through Castle Acorn like a meteor, leaving silence, ruin, and a throne room full of people who now understood—far too late—that the world had just tilted on its axis.
Wally Naugus watched the destruction with visible satisfaction.
Ooma Arachnis did not move.
The spiderlings stilled.
And somewhere far above, the sky itself somehow began to scream.
-------
Pain had long since become one of my compass needles, pointing true north toward the raw, unfiltered *now*—no past to mourn, no future to dread. Just sensation, consequence, and the math of survival. I flexed my claws slowly, deliberately, watching charred fur flake away like dead leaves shaken loose by an indifferent wind, revealing pink scar tissue beneath. The tissue glistened faintly in the bunker's emergency lights, half-healed already, already knitting itself together in that quietly obscene way my body had learned to do.
The burns would heal.
They always did.
That didn't make them *pleasant*. It just made them temporary. Pain, after a while, stopped being a warning and started being a timestamp. Proof that something had happened. Proof that I'd been present for it.
I rolled my shoulder, feeling the deep ache where a shock cannon had clipped me earlier, and hissed as the muscle protested. The thrill of the fight wasn't just about pain, though. That was the rookie misunderstanding. Pain was just the surface readout. The real addiction was evolution—the way every encounter rewrote me a little, the way my nervous system quietly took notes and updated its files. Burn patterns. Impact vectors. The smell of overheated circuitry right before something exploded. My enemies' machines could be reset with a switch, rebuilt from schematics, restored to factory settings.
Me?
I *remembered*.
I ran a claw along the bubbling flesh of my ribs, pressing just hard enough to split the blistered skin. Dark blood welled up like ink from a cracked pen, thick and almost black in the low light. The sting flared sharp and clean, then faded into that familiar, manageable throb. Predictable. Honest.
Pain was the only teacher that could never hope to lie to you.
It didn't exaggerate. It didn't sugarcoat. It didn't care about your pride.
Still, I sighed, looking down at the mess I was making on the bunker floor. Charred fur. Blood droplets. Ash from something that used to be a drone.
"I'm going to have to write about this in my journal," I muttered to no one in particular, "after I clean all of this shit up."
Again.
I grabbed the usual supplies from the utility closet: mop, bucket, broom, dustpan. The ritual was automatic now. Fill the bucket. Add disinfectant. Try not to think too hard about how many times I'd done this in the same room, scrubbing evidence of violence off the same reinforced concrete.
The bunker house wasn't supposed to feel like a tomb, but it did lately. Too many fights. Too many near-misses. Too many nights where we all pretended the walls weren't slowly closing in.
Earlier that day, Doc and Collin had left in a hurry, voices tight in that way people get when they're trying not to panic. They'd finally confirmed what they'd been half-suspecting for weeks: Collin's father—Collin Kintobor Sr.—had gone missing a month or two back. No messages. No sightings. No debris. Just… absence. The worst kind.
Doc hadn't said much when they told me. Just adjusted his glasses, jaw set, and said they needed to check on Collin's wife and daughter. Family business. The kind that didn't wait.
That left me, Sally, Patch, Buns, and Boomer holding down the bunker—right on schedule for Sector 5's latest rolling blackout.
The lights flickered once, twice, then dropped to emergency power. Red strips along the ceiling hummed to life, carving us into jagged silhouettes against steel and concrete. Shadows stretched, shrank, twitched like nervous animals. The hum of the ventilation system deepened, struggling to compensate.
Boomer was the first to react, as usual. He snapped upright, fingers twitching near the grip of his newly built rifle. The thing was a Frankenstein's monster of scavenged parts—energy cell from a patrol drone, barrel reinforcement from an old mining rig—but it worked. He trusted it. Maybe a little too much.
Buns sat cross-legged on the floor, unbothered, methodically cleaning her vibro knives. She'd powered them down and was wiping the blades with a rag soaked in hydraulic fluid, the sharp chemical scent cutting through the bunker's stale air. It was a habit she'd picked up after Sector 7's collapse. Back then, dirty blades meant infections. Infections meant screaming. She didn't like screaming.
Patch leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, one ear flicking toward the ventilation shaft every few seconds. His eyes tracked shadows that weren't really moving. He'd been jumpy since the last patrol, since the time something *big* had moved through the ruins without showing up on sensors. He hadn't said much about it, which worried me more than if he had.
And Sally—
Sally was staring at me like I'd just lit a fuse inside her skull and walked away whistling.
I felt it even with my back turned. That particular weight of attention. The kind that came with a thousand unasked questions and at least three very pointed accusations waiting in the wings.
I finished mopping, dumped the bucket, and tossed the mop aside with a clatter that echoed louder than it should have. Then I stretched, rolling my shoulders until the joints popped, ignoring the way Sally flinched at the sound.
"You're all thinking too loud," I said, flashing a grin that felt more convincing than it probably looked. "Relax. Blackouts mean King Maxx Acorn's distracted. Which means we've got *options*."
Boomer snorted. "Or it means something bigger's about to happen."
"Same thing," I shot back. "Depends how you look at it."
Sally didn't smile. Her arms were crossed tight against her chest, fingers digging into her sleeves. "You're being reckless," she said. Not loud. Not angry. Worse—controlled.
I tilted my head. "Define reckless."
"Don't do that," she snapped. "You know exactly what I mean. You're pushing harder every time. Taking more damage. Staying out longer. You're acting like—"
"Like what?" I asked, still grinning, because if I stopped grinning I might have to actually engage with that sentence.
She hesitated. Just a fraction of a second. Long enough.
"Like you think you're expendable."
The bunker seemed to get quieter after that. Even the hum of the vents felt subdued, like it was listening.
Patch shifted his weight. Buns paused mid-wipe, knife hovering. Boomer pretended very hard to check his rifle's charge indicator.
I shrugged. "We're all expendable. That's kind of the point."
"That's not the point," Sally shot back, stepping closer. The red light caught in her eyes, made them look sharper, harder. "The point is that you don't get to decide that alone."
I opened my mouth to respond—and then the bunker *shuddered*.
Not a small tremor. Not the distant rumble of collapsing infrastructure we'd all learned to ignore. This was close. Deep. A pressure wave that rolled through the walls and settled in my bones.
The lights flickered again. The emergency strips dimmed, then flared brighter, casting harsh, angular shadows.
Boomer raised his rifle. "That wasn't a blackout fluctuation."
Patch's ears were fully upright now. "No," he said quietly. "That was… something else."
I felt it too. A low, wrong vibration in the air. Like the world itself had cleared its throat.
Then the sound hit us.
A voice.
Not through speakers. Not over comms. It came from *everywhere*—from the walls, the floor, the air vibrating in my chest cavity.
It laughed.
Deep. Resonant. Layered, like multiple tones stacked slightly out of sync.
"OH, NOW *THIS* IS JUST FUCKING DELIGHTFUL!"
Sally went pale. "That's—"
"Yeah," I said softly, my grin finally fading. "I know Sal. I sadly know..."
The voice wasn't just loud—it was *dimensional*, vibrating through the bunker's steel reinforcement beams like a tuning fork pressed against the spine of the world. Static crackled across my teeth. My fur stood on end, not from fear, but from the raw, unfiltered *wrongness* of that sound. Because that voice wasn't King Maxx Acorn anymore. That voice was something wearing his skin.
Patch's claws dug into the wall behind him, cracking concrete. "Weapons check," he barked, voice tight. Boomer slapped his rifle's power cell home with a click that sounded obscenely small in the face of that laughter. Buns didn't move—just flipped her vibro knives back on, the blades humming to life with a high pitched whine that barely registered beneath the thickening pressure in the air.
Sally grabbed my wrist. Her grip was ice-cold. "Run," she hissed. Not to me. To *them*. "All of you—*now*." Her eyes locked onto mine, and for the first time since Sector 7 burned, I saw genuine terror in them. Not for herself. For *us*. "Because *that* isn't just Maxx anymore." She swallowed hard. "That's also something else talking."
And then the ceiling caved in.
And there floating above us all now was a transformed King Maxx Acorn.
"Stand ready for my arrival worm," he began, much quieter than before now, in a voice that sounded like the slow unspooling of reality itself.
It at that point, that I knew, I fucked up somewhere.
Then, pain.
Not the tolerable cuts from my training sessions—this was *rupture*. Master Maximillian's backhand sent me spinning through the bunker's reinforced wall like a bullet through wet paper, concrete shrapnel scoring my muzzle before I'd even registered the motion. The world snapped into hyperfocus—his talons flexing mid-air with casual sadism, my ribs screaming from the impact before I'd hit the ground—time stretching thin as arterial spray. I tumbled through debris, tasting copper and powdered drywall, my body carving a furrow through three collapsed storage units before momentum bled into agony.
His laughter followed—a seismic rumble shaking loose plaster from the ceiling as he descended through the hole he'd made, boots crushing rebar like twigs. "Still breathing? Good." The words dripped with mock disappointment, each syllable vibrating my molars. I rolled onto my elbows, spitting out a tooth, just in time to see him *flick* his wrist. The air pressure inverted. My stomach lurched as an unseen force yanked me upward—then *slammed* me back into the floor hard enough to crater the concrete.
My newly fractured ribs grated.
My vision suddenly completely whited out.
Somewhere beyond the ringing, Boomer was shouting, Buns' vibro knives had turned on, and Sally and Patch watched.
Then I was punched in the gut.
And sent flying high into the sky.
The sky inverted—blue to violet to black—as Master Maximillian's next playful backhand launched me through the skyline like a discarded toy. Wind shear ripped at my fur, the sudden altitude drop turning my stomach inside out before I even registered the arc of my descent.
Below, Mobius sprawled like a shattered chessboard, its ruined sectors bleeding smoke where Maxx's earlier tantrums had punched through skyscrapers. I tucked into a spin, bleeding momentum through controlled rotations, only for gravity to *twist*—Maximillian's flicked fingers warping physics itself—yanking me sideways into a spiraling nosedive toward the ocean.
Salt spray stung my nostrils seconds before impact, the water's surface hardening like concrete under his influence, my body cratering through three consecutive waves before sinking into the ocean below.
But I could still see a dark purple blob (almost certainly Master Maximillian but one of my eyes was already swelling) racing down towards me.
It this how my second life ends, at not even six years old by a knock off Super Form?