One year later.

On an orange planet with a red sky, the sounds of explosions could be heard leaving craters on the ground with bodies being thrown around.

“This is somewhat boring." A white-haired boy said with his feet hovering above the ground as energy blasts had their paths distorted and warped around him.

The men who fired the blasts had their heads soon parted with their bodies as a blade like Claw claimed their necks, leaving their corpses to hit the floor.

“You could at least help out, man." The distorted voice of Demiurge reached his ears with a snarl, a small beep sounding in their ears as the boy rolled his eyes.

“As you wish." The boy stretched out a clenched fist and slowly opened his palm; a small black sphere floated above his open palm.

Demiurge had his eyes twitch, his form quickly changing; his body had taken the form of a long tube-like creature with no eyes resembling a purple worm while he dove into the soil.

The white-haired boy turned his palm over, allowing the black sphere to touch the ground. The black mass caused the ground to crack and fissure the closer it came to the floor.

The attackers had taken a few steps back, with some trying to run and others still trying to attack the boy, only to have their attacks seemingly nullified.

The boy stood there with an expression that seemed almost like boredom, staring at the hole where his companion had dug into the ground before taking a deep breath and pointing a finger at the condensed black sphere.

“Detonate”. The sphere expanded like a flash of light—a flash of black disintegration that swallowed the entire facility in the marble-black shadow.

The sphere disappeared as quickly as it appeared, leaving a small figure floating in the air, below its feet a smoldering pitch black crater.

The planet's winds had picked up as the sky darkened and the clouds grew heavy with rain, as though the planet were attempting to weep in pain at the blemish that had been made on its surface.

“This planet is so cold." The boy said in a low tone, his breath forming fog with every word, the glow in his eyes starting to dim.

Just out of the range of the crater, a large purple worm burst out of the ground; its body bulged and pulsed as it opened its maw and emptied the contents of its stomach.

Two figures had left it’s stomach, one in a pair of cuffs that seemed to shine neon blue and a person in a full-body suit.

They had been covered in the sticky fluids that had followed the worm's stomach; the worm, however, had started to shrink until it had reverted back into the form of a man.

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“Having someone inside you is... an interesting feeling."

“I’d argue I had the worst experience with me being in your stomach." A female voice had come from the suit as it made a hissing sound washing off the gunk from the encounter.

“That’s the target, huh?” The white-haired boy was floating just above the man’s body with his feet in a lotus position while he watched them argue.

“Ah yes, Zed." The female voice exclaimed as the mask on her head came off as well, revealing her face while she placed a hand on her hip. “You could have been a bit more discrete."

The boy called Zed shrugged his shoulders, the sky finally letting go of its burden and pouring down water to wet the planet's surface.

The lady didn’t seem bothered by the fact she had come close to being eviscerated by the blast the boy had released; he wasn’t someone who didn’t take their speeds.

"Regardless, the mission was accomplished." The other two nodded their heads. His method may have been rough, but this was an abandoned mining planet, so there was unlikely to be anything here to begin with.

The objective that they had that date was fairly simple; all they had to do was retrieve the head researcher of the facility and leave.

Now this infiltration was originally going quite well originally, but due to an oversight in the target’s combat ability, they were now in this current situation.

The target had prepared a lot more guards for himself, and as a result of Sona having rather low combat ability, it had become quite a problem.

This resulted in a situation where they had to cause quite the flashy distraction upstairs until she could secure him.

Zed had played the role of a lost child on the planet, though their story had immediately fallen through because Demiurge was a terrible actor.

Their spaceship being destroyed due to Zed's slight miscalculation and Demiurges terrible sense of parking had them somewhat stranded.

“Do you think you can fly us through space?”. The boy crossed his arm over his chest and shook his head.

“Might as well just tell me to move the entire planet off it’s axis till we get to Nova.”

The snake-eyed Demiurge raised an eyebrow and gave the boy a questioning look: “Can you?”

The foolishness of the question had put a mischievous smirk on the boy's face. He looked up at the man named Demiurge. “Now what do you think the answer to that is, I wonder?”

"Man, this sucks." He exclaimed as he collapsed to the floor and sighed; their intercoms didn’t reach all the way back to the base, and they had left their long-range communicators in the ship.

That was at least what Demiurge thought until he saw Zed typing away at his mini-console and his face painted with disbelief.

“Alright guys, let’s wait a few minutes.”.

“I thought we left our communicators in the ship.” Sona asked faster than Demiurge could form the words himself.

He turned his eyes away from the screen and stared at his teammate. “I had a feeling we would need it, and with my powers, it felt much safer to keep it on me.”.

The communicator beeped and he flicked his eyes back to the screen, where he stared at the message he had revived: a sticker of a porcelain doll giving a thumbs up.

“Here we go." He flipped the screen to her, and the girl just stared at the screen, carefully reading the chat where he had sent them their location before looking at the contact name.

“Pretty Scary Doll?”

Zed slowly retracted the communicator, coughed into his hand, and remained silent while the two looked at him with judgment in their eyes.

On the other end of the communicator, a girl who looked like a porcelain doll flipped her communicator shut with a click and looked up from her reclined position.

“Hey, Dad, there’s someone that I need to pick up." The man whose lap she was currently lounging on raised an eyebrow.

The man gestured for the communicator as he looked up at the coordinates and transferred them to his ship's navigation console and handed it back to her.

“Thank you, Father.”.

“Adorable little monster?” The man asked with a raised eyebrow, and the doll-like girl shrugged, closing her eyes as she set down her communicator.

“He is adorable after all.”