RESETS: 42

  "Are you going to answer me?" Qubit asked.

  Iker stared at him blankly. "I just did."

  Nightfall came to Fornia as wavelets of spectators and smoke remained, unsure of whether they should stay recording or continue fleeing. Recording from the earthplexus did require a connected and willing body.

  "You do know about my powers right?" Qubit asked. "I have an overwhelming advantage over you."

  Atop Qubit's bald head rammed Hughmungus, dropping his weight with gravity's assistance. Closing the distance Iker dashed in with a kick. Iker knew Qubit would be confident in not having to move, so he did stop Iker from kicking him. Shock replaced his entire demeanor as Iker landed a handful of punches before Qubit retreated to his kaya form after a backwards jump rather than to his anagami form. Perhaps the first kick and punch did cause damage, but further hits were resisted.

  "How!?" Qubit yelled.

  Qubit's quantum powers were a cornerstone of the earthplexus invention, however Iker could bend the invisible veins too. Not through his flux powers, but because of his drones, and Iker noticed that Qubit figured it out when he shifted his focus towards Hughmungus's roaring engines trying to take off from the footstep-ridden ground. However, Qubit met eyes with Iker again.

  "So Byza is familiar with earthplexus tech huh?" Qubit asked.

  Since asking that question, Qubit withdrew his weapon that was everpresent merchandise in the whiter and wealthier areas of Colorado. First resembling a richly-embossed bamboo stick, he gave it one solid shake to bisect the half-stick and half-pendulum nunchucks. During the bisection Iker closed the gap once more, but Qubit spun to his left along with his withdrawn weapon spiraling overhead with him. However, Iker was not his current target.

  While he scanned the night sky as his nunchucks picked up more momentum, the earthplexus veins connected to Iker and his 420 drones were no longer invisible.

  RESETS: 5

  The supernal eye looming over Monica levitated above her and towards the endless skies. Ceasing its verticality, it rolled horizontally without shifting its center, doing it slowly as if not to further scare the ex-jaunter of one platoon. Its blinking eyelids were cosmic-like limestone while the rest had every possible material in existence.

  "What does it do exactly?" Monica asked.

  Its tears create true and perfect spheres, Iggy explained. As you may know, in harder realities anyway, no flux user is able to create perfect spheres. This is the magical weapon that creates them. In realities where flux users, or practitioners of other magic systems, can create perfect spheres... well those realities are more virtual. More fictional. The perfect spheres from Ayin will persist no matter how hard the laws of physics get. These spheres can go to realms where perfect spheres are deemed impossible.

  "Ayin?" Monica asked.

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  Yea that's the name I gave it, Iggy said. Spiderland stills calls it the cyclopean.

  "You're planning to try and save Fornia anyway," Monica affirmed. "What you said earlier... is it more accurate that you are experiencing Fornia falling? Are you having visions of it falling? Are you remembering it falling?"

  You are asking how my four-dimensional mind works, Iggy said. The past, present, and future were more cohesive when it was just us mods, but having Ameen, Maverick and Ember involved, its like we were battling at every second across infinity at first. Then it came to us trying to strike each other's spawn points, and now we changed it so birth is not when a being begins.

  "I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that," Monica said. "You would think going back in time and killing someone when they are born would get rid of them forever, but now that's not the case anymore. It's hard to picture it when you've lived a linear life. Linear life has become a mortal illusion in a way. The shared reality of linear life no longer is shared among mods and mortals, it is only mortals that experience it now. Birth being the beginning might as well be a planted memory."

  Heaven and hell were not first created to punish and save souls, Iggy added. It was created by Alice to keep reality from shattering from time paradoxes. She had no idea that she was creating what would be considered heaven and hell in the future. They were just simulations to h—

  The omnipresent blues beyond all directions were interrupted. Indistinct static lines ruptured the realm fitfully, Monica spotting cracks from the eternal grid and oblivion. A younger and familiar laugh echoed throughout the clear sky simulation.

  RESETS: 42

  Despite his method of shutting down Qubit's anagami powers being revealed, Iker did not stop continuously closing the distance between them. However, it was too late as Qubit flipped away from Iker's punch once more.

  At first it began with a cascade of scrapes, Iker spotting the last 420 drone nosediving into the boardwalk behind him. The earthplexus veins dancing around him and Qubit coalesced between them, and before Iker could escape from its golden vicinity it whipped towards him like the nunchucks in Qubit's revolving hands. In seconds Iker froze completely.

  Iker thought it was a drone he recalled at first, but the spinning swoops coming closer became more alien to him as it neared. What could have been an instance of flung nunchucks cleaving his head off was absorbed by a portal that spawned. Whatever Qubit was doing behind it ceased the hold on Iker's body, and he observed the portal that revealed an open sky as he ran away. Sinking in the distance was a familiar spaceship and an approaching arak, yet Iker could not remember how he met ver.

  "How many resets has it been?" Uzi yelled from the other reality.

  In hot pursuit behind ver, Pegasus and Wexil were hopping and flying over levitating crates as Qubit's nunchucks went through the portal and spun past them, both of them also coming closer to the reality Iker and Qubit were fighting in.

  "I don't know!" Iker yelled back. Uzi made it to Fornia right as Iker raised his right elbow to block an attempted sucker punch from Qubit. A rainbow beam and a throwing knife screeched through, the beam lighting the distant hotel on fire while the knife stabbed right into Uzi before the portal closed.

  "Shit!" Uzi yelled.

  Explosions erupted at the bottom of the hotel.

  RESETS: 5

  Upon the magic eye's paroxysm Monica turned around to sprint away from it. Distorted pixels manifested on the eye that was both open and closed, the translucent afterimage of the eyelids being closed drifting away slowly. Between the malware-like distortion the undead centaur avatar of Iggy spawned, oscillating between digital, magical, and physical states. His mandible were open wide while his knightly gear disintegrated, the stab wound from Ember reappearing as a static and silver scar. Upon the scar reopening it swirled into a perfect circle to shapeshift into a portal. Spinning like a jet in an airshow, sixteen-year-old Pager arrived to the sky simulation to find Monica had ran a few miles away on the grid becoming visible.

  Pager eased his neck before using his right palm to crack his neck both ways, the malware behind him taking the shape of a goat and a demiurge respectively.

  "I made a new friend too!" Pager yelled, pointing a thumb backwards.