Arion watched as an army of poorly trained penguins moved into formation around his quarries. Ari had been tasked with keeping track of the two troublesome silver-haired people and figuring out which one had been compromised.

Nicole summoned her three-headed dog and had it tear into the flightless bird abominations. The creature's green organs and purple blood-like fluid covered the area as they died in a gruesome fashion.

Minah injected dagger after dagger into their thick skulls crippling their brains one after another with explosive precision. Within A minute countless corpses littered the ground and yet the hoard of penguins seemed to multiply.

“What have.”

“Why are there more now than when we started?”

“Looks like troll regeneration, only fire doesn't stop the healing.”

“This is ridiculous!”

Arion continued to watch the duo from atop his perch, hidden in plain sight. They continued to fight and yet he couldn’t see anything obvious as of yet. He watched as creatures grew from the blood-forming bodies using the ambient environment and mana. Slowly gaining resistance and adapting after each wave was slain.

“Nicole. We need to find the person controlling these creatures and put them to death.”

“I agree. Let's make a game of it.”

The fight continued to last for another few hours before Minah and Nicole reached their limit. Their total number of foes had increased tenfold and gained resistance to fire and piercing attacks.

“This is ridiculous.” Nicole fell first, her stamina wavering as her mana nearly bottomed out.

In that instant, Ari saw a ring of purple flames appear behind Nicole as a clawed hand attempted to get her from behind.

“Execute form Epsilon.” Arion’s irises glowed as the device that mimicked a human brain was pushed into overdrive, their senses and perception increased to deadly levels as they moved forward bypassing light and sound for the briefest of movements. In seconds Arion was able to drop a special surprise through the other side of the portal before using a Phoblade to remove the limb in a single strike before returning to their perch, smoke and green ichor exiting his skin.

“Ahhh!”

Nicole spun around and raised a hand as she heard the scream from behind. She eyed the cauterized and oddly familiar severed arm. “What was that?”

Minah looked towards Ari and scowled within her helm, she’d sensed a burst in kinetic energy caused by rapid movement but hadn't been able to track it while it moved.

“Are you here just to spy on us?”

“Hmm?” Ari looked down, noticing that they’d been discovered.

“What did you do?” Nicole asked.

“Hmm…” Ari felt pain in their gut and instinctively jumped off their perch. Landing after four flips in the air.

“Can you say anything else?” Nicole asked with clear irritation.

“I must apologize. I seem to have misjudged you.” Ari stated in a monotone.

A beast covered in familiar purple flames erupted from a portal as a clawed hand with three wolf heads acting as beads stuck in empty air.

“What exactly did you misjudge?” Nicole asked as she threw a vial through the portal and watched it be forced shut. The vial acts as a spatial implosion bomb.

“You aren’t the one who killed my Kyr. You’re just a bit of a yandere.” Ari said with an exaggerated wink before pressing four fingers into his upper right ribs.

“He’s yours? Wait what does that last word mean.” Nicole seemed irritated.

“You could say that we are closer than any two people could be.” Ari seemed to be a bit of a firebug as he seemed to enjoy being burned alive. As a black sword covered in violet flames and shared a similar motif to the hand nearly pieced his chest.

A set of rib bones exploded from their chest exposing their upper body a bit more of their upper body.

Nicole had a dangerous realization as she felt as though she eyed Ari in suspicion. “Is that why he doesn’t look at me like that?”

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“Paid in full.” Ari knew exactly what they were doing.

Minah didn’t exactly know but recognized that this was one of his clones going AWOL, as they seemed to be a bit mentally unstable. “Less talk about love and more fighting. Who was that and why are they attacking us?”

“Hmm? We believe she’s Nicole’s fourth shard.”

“We?”

“Ari and their soul mates,” Ari said in a falsetto.

“Not like this.” Nicole seemed to be having an existential crisis.

“Quit messing with her. You can’t change your whole character on a whim. Stick with a personality.”

“Well, that’s going to be hard. We don’t have our personality yet.” Ari stated in a monotone as their lack of a naval seemingly became obvious. The clones took on forms similar to how they were in life or how they see themselves.

“Blood curse, unmake.” Ari activated a blood spell forbidden in wars and tournaments due to their ability to spread.

The penguins erupted and exploded many of the countless legion dying but those who survived came to life though their forms seemed to be inside out and bloodless.

“Hmmm. I have formed an opinion based on knowledge from multiple worlds. Penguins are the scourge of humanity.”

“What are you going on about? Fight or shut up.” Minah said with irritation.

“Oh… looks like one of my comrades is calling. Take care of these guys, dig deep. You got this, Kyrion believed in you.” Ari jumped into the sky and took their position on the perch.

“Past tense?” Nicole seemed even more confused.

“Ugh. Don’t think too much about it.”

“If you don’t explain, I’ll leave you to the birds.”

“Well, you two haven’t been performing very well.”

“We have done our best.”

Ari felt like stirring the pot a bit more. “Did you really? I know Rion didn’t want to reveal Minah’s capabilities, but we’re in the finals and she still isn’t meeting expectations. Then there’s Nicole, never assume you can get things past Kyr, due to losing an eye he trained his senses to work around him in a large area. You tried to threaten his kids, you aren’t the shard he met in the library, and one or two of your shards have tried to kill him, mostly via backstabbing. How did you subdue the shard that goes by Nico?”

“Beg pardon?”

“The first one Kyr met. The one from Almira.”

“I don’t know--”

“Moving on.” Ari sighed as they activated their Phoblade and pressed a button extending the blade until it was a Phowhip. Swinging it into the inside-out penguins and eviscerating many of them in a single strike.

Those that survived grew reflective carapaces on their outside that were also quite durable though to eyes developed for noticing limitations on an ability Kyrion developed to know when a friend was pushing themselves to their detriment and needed to rest.

“Alright. I’m going to show you this once Minah. If you can’t figure out how to eradicate all these monsters in one strike then you’re off the team.”

“There are at least 50 of them.”

“Yes and? You should know about chain reactions.” Ari cracked their neck and walked up to a penguin that was now too heavy to move.

Placing a bit of unaligned mana in their palm Ari lightly stuck the receptive carapace and the creature vibrated a bit. The force was powerful enough to spread to nine more penguins that then exploded into raw mana. The first penguin struck seemingly turned into mist while its carapace only showed a hand print.

“What was that?” Nicole asked.

Ari’s left eye twitched and held up a hand. “Mana fueled concussive dissonance, it’s so easy a kid with a pot and wooden spoon could accidentally figure it out.”

Ari then covered their palm in mana and moved it forward and backward fast enough to shatter the air and create a loud violent series of drumming. And leave behind afterimages “A simple armored monster that is all organs on its outer insides like one of those would find themselves dead in seconds and the vibrations could spread to all of them if you hit them just right. It isn’t that hard to get two or three without the proper affinities or strength. Why am I teaching you this? Figure it out I’m not even getting paid for this. Also… Nicole, if you help indirectly again I’ll have to give you some information that you don’t want to know.”

“What would I not want to know?”

“That’s a very good question. I’m sure it would be devastating not to know what you don’t know. But, it could be something quite devastating.”

Nicole seemed quite concerned about any information that could prove detrimental to her goals.

“Right then, Minah. Get to work.” Ari leaned against a stone wall and sunk in partially as they answered their communication device.

Minah slapped a penguin and its head wrung a bit before shooting off of its shoulders moments later the torso grew a new tougher armored head and the armored head grew a new armored body.

“Well, that’s not good.”

“What?” Nicole asked.

“Oh. Oh! Well then you smooth pigeon.” Ari’s face reddened.

“What!”

“A very touching moment it could progress any second now. It’s a matter of time before...Oh, you don’t want to know. Seems like your shards share the same general feelings. A shame really as that could ruin things in the long term.” Ari was a personality that fused with modern technology and then went rogue due to some innate mischievousness, rage, and twisted nature.

“What!”

“Oh. Just a false alarm. No need to worry yet. You may want to cover your ears.” The flush seemingly faded as though it didn’t exist. The reason Ari buried themselves became obvious.

Nicole realized what Ari was doing seconds before it happened and dived to the side her ears covered.

“Can you two just shut up?! I can’t bloody concentrate!” Minna accidentally poured mana into her vocal cords, lungs, and everything around that general area.

The penguins exploded in quick succession. A few nearby trees shook while portions of the walls cracked. The land itself split in the a cone and yet by the time the sound faded puddles of raw mana littered the land and seemingly began to get absorbed into the air.

The echo and reverberation passed over the desert and killed a few hidden underground monsters that used sound and eliminated a small species of bats with exceptional hearing in a cave two miles away.

Minah felt most of her mana fade rapidly as she fell to a knee and began to suck in air greedily. Coughing as some went down the wrong pipe.

As the vibrations faded Ari regenerated both of their eardrums. He then left the wall and sighed. “Took quicker than I expected but you didn’t do it the way I wanted. Must have a pretty low rage tolerance.”

Minah tried to speak but nothing came out.

“Hmm? Right so you know, your power can work on all of your organs and by saturating your body in mana and raising the endurance of your organs with balance and practice you could increase your versatility, raw power, and endurance quite quickly. I know you hate thinking much, which is why I won’t tell you that magical nonsense and misdirection are the way to go. While you do need to use your head, using it as a ram may suit your thought pattern better. That and you should learn to create fields that eliminate kinetic energy from projectiles and slow down targets. Do your research and slowly infuse your brain with your power to increase the speed of your thoughts as well. It could come in handy. Now then.”

“Was anything going on that I don’t want to know about?”

“Hmmm.?” Ari tossed Minah a purple vial and sighed. “Well yes and no. It seems Birdion and Dog-eared Nicole are in a rather close position. Who knows what could happen next?”

“You’re insane.”

“No, I’m Ari.”

Minah’s eyes rolled back in her head as her body was rapidly healed, her brain doing a hard reset as she found herself burning and freeing simultaneously.

“That may have been a bit too strong,” Ari stated.