Banks stood at the side of the street staring at the Maceronin restaurant searching his memories and trying to line them up to the image in his head. Unfortunately his memory had gotten shit as he aged and something that happened already a few days ago already felt like it had fallen into the gaps of his memory, an abyss which he no metaphorical rope in order to climb down.

  "It must be that restaurant," he mused to himself. "How many Maceronin restaurants can there possibly be in the town. Let alone just in the old town. They must be in there." Nodding to himself in affirmation he crossed the street heading towards the door, and he was almost there before he paused. "Actually it looks a little different." The differences, now apparent, he turned and headed away before the door swung open.

  "The boss said to stop fucking around and get in here," a short man with an eyepatch said.

  "Oh, it was the right place after all," Banks said to himself. "Unless every gang in this part of the town operates from a Maceronin restaurant.

  "There's only one Maceronin restaurant in all of this city," a familiar voice yelled from the back.

  "Boss said there's only one of these types of restaurant on the city," the short man with an eye patch repeated.

  "He can hear me Jessit," the voice from the back responded. "Get in here, before I have to drag you in here myself."

  "No need to be rude," Banks shrugged as he walked past the short man and into a familiar interior. "Ah, so this is the correct place."

  "What are you doing loitering around my restaurant," the familiar Psideri at the back on her stupid chair, said giving him a look that contained a mix of exasperation and disappointment. Around her were her collection of goons degenerate and otherwise those to whom the broader society assigns very little value.

  "Well I was hoping for some Phoenix-style sweet cream ravioli," Banks said as he walked into the lions den, flexing his mana and feeling it run through his body, raising his defense to the max as he pulled out a chair and spun it around casually taking a seat.

  "We're out of Ravioli," the Psideri said, causing him to scoff inwardly. That was the third most popular dish in Maceronin cooking. There's no way that they are actually out of that.

  "Well then you can give me the location of the one called Ascrew," Banks said, scanning her face. Not even a twitch from her personally, but those surrounding her went as professional. Some gave her querying looks, one coughed, a few shuffled as if wanting to speak up.

  "I never worked with somebody called Ascrew," she said. "I don't know where he is?"

  "I believe the first, but I think you're lying about the second," Banks said as he stood up from his chair.

  "Oh, you're think I'm lying," the Psideri said standing up from her chair. "Are you going to force it out of me?"

  "If I have to," Banks said, causing silence to pervade the room like a cold smothering blanket. For a long moment this silence sat, before it was broken by the Psideri who broke into a raucous laughter. A second later her gang members also followed her, laughing with a mix of genuine and nervous laughter. Banks stared at the group as the laughter faded and the Psideri wiped a tear from her eye...before she hit him with a chair.

  -0.5 seconds

  He dodged the chair that jumped out at him grabbing, the backrest before turning and smashing it onto the head of one of the thugs leaping towards him, the wooden chair shattering upon impact, before he grabbed a nearby table and flipped it over seconds before a hail of stone pebbles like arrows slammed into it. He kicked the table towards the Psideri moving up and using it as cover before he jumped backwards as a swarm of living hands erupted from the back of the table swarming towards him with grabbing motions, intending to grip and grasp in a way that he didn't consent to. As he jumped backwards he ducked under a swarm of flying green termite shaped creatures that swarmed him and he raised his defenses as they swarmed forward latching onto him and attempting to burrow into his body. No, he wouldn't have that.

  -1 seconds

  As he jumped backwards he grabbed a tablecloth, pulling it out with a practiced flourish that left the half-eaten meal intact and flung it over the swarm, catching all of them in one foul swoop. He stepped forward, grabbing ahold of the cloth, held aloft by the disproportionate strength of the insects, and turned catching a charging man in it, pulling it tight then and stabbing a knife between both ends of the cloth forcing him into an ugly bug-ridden tablecloth dress. He turned again kicking him away, before lashing out a punch at a cloud of smoke in front of him, which his fist passed through, before a person another thug rematerialized from the smoke behind him stabbing into his neck.

  -0.5 seconds

  He whirled around just as the man materialized, grabbing him out of mid air by his throat, before tossing him at a person who was preparing some big spell and taking them both out. He straightened up as a man covered in a solid layer of rock charged him and he weaved an absurdly telegraphed blow, stepping past him before grabbing a bottle of olive oil off the nearby table before smashing it over his head and letting the rest drip onto the floor. He ducked and stepped back as the man whirled around and stepped into the puddle of oil and he nearly did the splits before he regained his balance. A balance that was swiftly disrupted by a kick to the face which resulted in the man finding himself on the floor in an undoubtedly painful position.

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  Banks turned around and he had a brief moment of warning before dinner plates accelerated far faster than the speed of sound slammed into his body tearing past his magically defended skin and nearly breaking a few bones on their way to his fleshy organs. It was a nearly omnidirectional assault from every corner of the room and one that his feeble two hands couldn't block and he smiled through bloody teeth as he turned back time.

  -1 seconds

  In an instant dozens of plates on the way to take his life were shattered and Banks stood alone in the restaurant surrounded by five orbiting gemstones. For a moment he just felt like standing there, basking in the admiration that he rightfully deserved for that feat, but not everybody got the memo and so he let on of the rhinestones fall into his hand, before casually tossing it towards a random gangster at speeds far in excess to what a casual throw should ever achieve. Banks watched coldly as it tore through his leg leaving a hole the size of silver coin and cause the man to screech in agony as the bone was shattered beyond natural healing.

  "Agua's Rhinestone Tears," he announced the name of the spell, before one of them intercepted a knife aimed towards his forehead knocking it into the air and allowing him to almost catch it, just the tips of his fingers knocking it down to the ground where it landed tip first into the wooden floor. That was embarrassing. He crouched and picked up the knife, his eyes never leaving those of the Psideri.

  The silence stretched once again before knife after knife clashed against the stones, the pair never breaking eye contact as steel was shattered by rhinestone only to reform and approach at a different angle, twisting to take advantage of every angle, every lapse in perception. The speed increased as none of the others gangsters even attempted to approach at this moment, obliterated tables, cratered floor and even holes in the wall left by stray attacks were testament to the danger in even approaching this fight. Wordlessly the Psideri lifted her hand and various implements, knives, plates, table parts and other detritus formed into a ball about a meter wide, before condensing down to half a meter, than ten centimeters, then five, then one.

  "Dodge this," she said, her tone a mix between taunt and genuine device as the small ball, pitch black hovered in front of her before with a motion like flicking a coin...

  -0.5 seconds

  -0.5 seconds

  -0.5 seconds

  Banks grasped the trajectory and the the condensed ball of death smashed into the Rhinestone tear, before both attacks were deflected slightly off course. An explosion hit the far side of the room, vaporing half the wall, before the ball hung unnaturally still and then slowly looped around him and back to the five fingered hand of the Psideri. His Rhinestone Tear similarly returned to his hand. It had bounced off the psychic shield of the Psideri.

  "Can you still force it out of me?" she asked casually.

  "Perhaps," Banks responded. "I'm still willing to find out." He smiled as the rhinestones doubled from five to ten.

  "I can tell you right now what the correct answer is," she said as two more of those small black balls were formed out of the surrounding detritus and the three circled her hand like well-trained dogs, eager to be let off the leash and take a bite out of him. "But it would be more fun for us to find out together. Compressed detritus hit rhinestone with a screeching sound that shattered all the glasses in the restaurant. Dust kicked up and he smiled as he realized that the sneaky Psideri was trying to surreptitiously blind him and so he closed his eyes relying only on his mana vision that wasn't effected by the use of his eyelids.

  By quantity he was winning, his ten rhinestones had that advantage over her three compressed spheres, but each one that snuck past her orbs, each one that wasn't blocked by her defenses merely plinked off a circular sphere of light purplish energy that flared into existence at the moment of impact. Psychic power was both subtle and terrifyingly unyielding but he had a secret method of bypassing it, he just had to. He aimed a rhinestone upwards at the ceiling smashing towards it and causing wood and dust to cascade down on the woman, only for everything to be carefully moved aside and stacked neatly on the ground once more displaying the insane levels of control that this Psideri displayed.

  And then pain tore through his body as one of his rhinestones was directly taken over and spiked straight through his body. It was a sneaky move but as he pumped more mana into the spell he was now easily able to regain control over that specific rhinestone, now covered in blood and flesh, his eyes not leaving the Psideri whose own flickered with a sense of triumph, before they widened in shock. The Psideri looked downwards to see a bloody rhinestone shaped hole in the center of her chest. Her shield not even even held up for a second against the rhinestone covered in his blood.

  "Oh, Strange Elements," she wheezed before she suddenly heaved, coughing up blood. "Damnit, got my lung. Just why are the Psideri the only bloodline vulnerable to Strange Elements. Just why are we so special?" He watched with some surprise as the hole in her chest slowly stitched itself up. Psychic powers generally didn't lend themselves to healing. The fact that she could do that spoke hefty volumes to her power and control.

  "Well yeah, obviously most modern bloodlines were created partially through the use of Strange Elements," Banks said as he forcibly pumped mana into the wound preventing it from degrading further and more blood being spilled. "Since Psideri came about in a completely different way, it's obvious that they would have a different relationship with SEs." His mana surged further and his rhinestones increased to fifteen, the maximum that he could wield before his concentration over them started to falter. "Now come on, I'm still not out of the fight yet."

  "What you mean, Psideri came about in a different way?" the Psideri asked. "Do you know the origin of the Psideri?"

  "Do you...do you not," Banks said, his rhinestones sinking slightly as he scrutinized the Psideri for any evidence of a lie. "Sorry, thought this was common knowledge."

  At once Banks felt a strong grasp as his clothes were picked up with him inside and he was gently sat down on a chair. The various gangsters in the room's bodies were twisted and reformed back into their original shape and the entire restaurant seemed to almost flow backwards in time, it was only Bank's intimate experiences with the river that he could tell that this was just very, very high level telekinesis. After just a few seconds the room looked nearly forty percent as good as new, even the broken wall was mostly rebuilt.

  "Tell me everything," the Psideri said sitting back in the sex couch, a look of pure focus on her face.

  "First I'm going to need a whiteboard," Banks said leaning forwards despite the audible squelching of his guts and matching her stare.