Joaquim stood on the taiga platform, the cold winds of the high atmosphere bit at his lips and brought the scent of fresh pine. As he was training with the Kayaku app to further his martial arts skills, his Kaya form that could manipulate his cells made of carbon chains, and his influx usage...

No it was not morning.

It was not night.

It was not the afternoon or midday.

It was not evening either, or dawn, or dusk...

As his chest tightened, Joaquim could feel time itself trying to correct itself. No, what gave him that sensation... was what seemed like a flickering hospital light above him. Darkness and light assaulted his vision.

However, as he titled his head above him...

It was not a hospital light.

It was the sky.

The sky was inflicted with madness. It flickered like a broken screen as it kept shapeshifting into different shades of blue and black, until it resembled a dead channel. The kind of dead channels Joaquim had seen on cassette media.

Joaquim took slow steps forward on the artificial snow under his combat boots, already melting into large puddles of water to get closer to the edge of the flying platform. The edge was now concrete instead of snow, and a massive thud came from behind him.

With the earth on the platform turning to mud, Joaquim glanced behind him to find pine trees still falling, melting slushes of water and snow from the fake mountain pushing them all towards the edge.

The water running around Joaquim's boots would push him off the platform too if he was not using his Kaya form to resist its force. He took another step forward carefully, focusing as much power into his soles so he could to stay stable and to glance over what was now a flying platform made of concrete, rocks, and rolling trees and rivers.

As he glanced below the platform...

The rest of the Ember Tree city platforms were gone.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

No Man's Land was no longer below either.

Instead, a sea of simulations were running under the terrified boy. Universes, pixelated lands, and planes of existence were crashing into annihilation. The screams of millions of civilizations perishing became the sound of static when it reached Joaquim's ears. He gasped in as much air as he could as his breaths were already quite shallow, just like the muddy waters that were now at his knees.

The sun and the moon were already lines. When Joaquim really focused on the manic sky, it became apparent that the Earth was spinning faster than usual, or was it that it appeared as if it was spinning faster?

Was it all an illusion?

Was Joaquim even on Earth anymore?

The two lines that were once the sun and the moon became thinner, becoming lines of energy that spawned instead of travelling. An attack of unstoppable force.

As the sky shattered, a spinning hand made of numbers came through, making hand signs to what seemed like a cosmic rhythm. As Joaquim peered past it, millions of hands were dancing with 0 or 1, with each hand sign they made creating a white beam from the edge of their open fingers likes lines on a graph. They were referencing each other, turning information into power.

And what was protecting Joaquim's simulation... he found her noclipping in the eclectic sky.

Slicing through a white void that almost swallowed all of his vision and Joaquim himself...

"How dare you?" Tyra Thunberg greeted, arriving beside the boy in a t-pose after deleting the beam. Joaquim could not close his mouth from awe, but the goddess smized at him anyway.

Hello? Iker asked.

Sensei? Joaquim cried. What... what...

Everything and nothing is happening, Iker explained. What were you doing before all the crazy shit started?

Uhm.. training, Joaquim replied.

Joaquim, I knew about you and Ameen, Iker said. I was playing stupid. If this is the day your test began... this must mean Camilo shapeshifted into me.

Joaquim opened earthplexus hologram screens with his will to find that all instances where he saw the name... or the word Noah...

Was replaced with Iker.

Did Iker become an AI?

What in the actual fuck? Joaquim asked.

Be ready to ask that a lot, Iker said. It's... basically how 2 platoon salutes each other at this point. I need you to go find out if Fatima is fighting Camilo, then I am guiding you to Derry Hill 2.

Derry Hill 2?

It'll... be better for you to see it for yourself, Iker said.

However, it was already too late.

Indeed, Lieutenant Tagore was trying to slow down the shapeshifter with grids of mercury spawning, and Tyra Thunberg became a spinning top to try and attack him. However, as if he knew he would lose trying to get any closer to Joaquim, Camilo stopped marching and front flipped over a line of mercury Lieutenant Tagore manifested, and his flesh and clothes rippled like blossoming flowers.

With only the top half of his bare skull resembling a white boy with blue eyes, Camilo pointed at Joaquim.