A week had passed since the funerals.

What remained of the city around the mosque the three boys ventured to was more erosion, yellow grass, and wild weeds rather than concrete and cyber metal. It was as if judgment came upon the blasted blocks and only left sacred structures intact. Well, that was until the Byza gang desecrated the beige mosque itself, now adjoined to the urban sprawl rather than defying it. To Joaquim, the Byzan graffiti scratches were a welcome change from the symbols and slurs A Big Satan Under Your Pinky Toe fans were fond of.

"They're either dumb or ballsy," Farouq whispered just a little louder than Visard's buzzing above. The sky lit the boys and the scenery quite brightly even though the atmosphere was blacker than ever. Today the smog was too dense for the midday neon circle to crack through.

"I am betting on dumb," Gabe replied.

"Why are we here today?" Joaquim interrupted. "Aren't we supposed to come tomorrow?"

"Time is relative," Farouq mouthed.

"Shut up. You don't even know what that means," Joaquim said.

"You got told to come here right?" Gabe interrupted, glancing in Farouq's direction. The three of them were around two hundred meters away from the desecrated mosque. "Shouldn't we be hiding? They can see us from here."

Farouq scoffed. "I don't give a fuck. I got influx too. And so do you."

"What are your powers anyway?" Joaquim asked Farouq.

"What? Are you planning to jump me for eating your samosa?"

"No."

"I am an esper," Farouq finally answered.

"You didn't answer my question," Gabe fussed.

"What do you think?" Farouq blurted out. "Why am I going to answer something so obvious?"

"If he's here this early then he got told to come here," Joaquim answered. "Did Prophet Ameen know that Byza would already be here?"

"I guess so. You two have eyes don't you?" Farouq said.

Sparks and smoke crackled above the corrupted concrete underneath the boys. They all strode away with quiet gasps until the crunching of bark scared them into hopping away from wherever the sound came from. They turned their heads to the direction of the crunch, and it came from a tree that did not forego its own growth despite the remnant of a skyscraper piercing atop its soiled roots. Indeed, the tree's roots kept growing upwards to the heavens, and it gallantly circumnavigated the mass of steel, the shattered highrise windows, and the debris underneath. The roots wrapped around the mass and converged into a triumphant trunk at the crest.

The barky crunch returned even though it was coming from behind the skyscraper chunk at first. The crunching proceeded to the front of the chunk, activating the roots to slither like lightning bolts or glitching neurons. While the invisible sun helped manifest a rampaging boar's shadow behind the mass of metal and concrete, what appeared to be stabilizing roots at first were actually the foundation of a deer's antlers spawning on the frame of the highrise window.

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Joaquim remembered that there were random sparks on the ground earlier, and he turned his head back to find a smoky silhouette of robes and bare feet. Farouq and Gabe were already observing the peculiarity until gunshots echoed across the polluted air. The boys dropped into a crouch, either rolling or crawling behind whatever frames remained from shops and buildings to protect themselves.

However, it seemed that they had nothing to worry about.

Opposing the Byzan gunners from the mosque stood Prophet Ameen where the smoke once hovered. After a clang and spark from a bullet missing Visard grazed a defunct streetlight, the gunfire immediately ended. Gooseflesh formed on Joaquim's skin after the sudden silence.

Amid what could barely be called a gunfight, Prophet Ameen was perfectly still as if he was giving a sermon inside the mosque. What Joaquim mistook for subsonic fire was actually the flying heads of the Byzan gang members. Wooden boards that hid the illicit activities within the mosque's windows turned to magnolia branches hitting the dead grass, letting the dark shadows of flying heads overflow through all available openings.

Subduing his underlings with an immediate death, it seemed their Byzan boss finally decided to confront Prophet Ameen. Channeled influx poured through his pores and bender-worn suit as he kicked open the mosque doors. When Joaquim turned his head back to Prophet Ameen, he already approached the boss within an influx jump's distance. Joaquim, Gabe and Farouq ran after Prophet Ameen across the yellow weeds and cracked concrete.

The stupor in the Byzan boss's step became more pronounced as he focused more influx across his body, flooding out the sounds of hooves hitting pavement. "Does that ability you just used not work on influx users?"

The stupor had yet to reach his voice, and he was hugging an influxtrode machine within his arms. It resembled a defibrillator that was made with jet black metal and neon blinkers.

He must have used it to awaken his abilities, Joaquim thought.

"You have made it even more obvious that you are new to this," Prophet Ameen said.

The Byzan boss smirked, his lips and skin more parched than the yellow grass beneath him. "I did not expect you to be boastful. I thought you would have just killed me as fast as the others."

"When I criticize your sophomoric debut to an influx fight, let me assure you that your opinion of me is of no concern," Prophet Ameen said. "This is solely about your foolish question. Have your foes ever tried to ask how your aim is so accurate when you fired at them? And were you foolish enough to answer the question with helpful advice?"

"So no helpful advice then?" the Byzan boss joked, his words juxtaposing his forced smile and sweat beading on his forehead. Other than Visard's buzzing getting a little louder when Farouq examined it, it became eerily quiet again with Prophet Ameen's nonresponse. The boss's body below the neck flickered to nonexistence for a snap second until he forced a step forward.

Releasing a battle cry and all the influx he could at once, the Byzan boss influx jumped towards Prophet Ameen. Amid smashed terrestrial cars on the parking lot of the mosque, the silhouettes of a boar and deer veered in between the two humans. Due to not being able to react due to the momentum he already picked up in midair, the Byzan boss tripped over the boar that oinked in frustration at him and he fell into his demise onto the deer's antlers.

The crunch of bone and flesh after his second reactive and fleeting scream was incomparable to the mystical crunching of the tree earlier. Joaquim could not deduce if it was due to meeting his end so suddenly, but the Byzan's boss final scream could have echoed through multiple dimensions.

With the clopping getting quieter with distance, the freshly impaled corpse lubricated the deer's antlers, the blood aiding the body slide up and down while she carried it behind the mosque.

Even though Joaquim and Gabe winced the whole time at the Byzan's boss utter humiliation...

Farouq laughed.