Troy paced. Her teacher stared her down in expectation of an answer to her question. A question that Troy didn’t know how she truly felt about.

“You want me to fight in the tournament of scions?”

The older woman nodded, as Troy had now asked this same question three times in a row without response. The thought of potentially having to fight against Arson and many other powerful scions from a vast amount of different realms and realm layers enough to overwhelm her.

She didn’t actually know if she could hyperventilate but felt that she was regardless of what her body was capable of doing. She hadn’t left Adroit Academy in more than an entire season cycle, while only a couple fortnights had passed back in the world outside the dungeon school, and now she was being asked... not to visit her friends and family, but to potentially fight against an individual her soul was linked to.

“What is the problem, child? I thought you would be proud to be selected. It's an incredible honor, and of the countless students here, you are one of three,” stated the head light professor of Adroit Academy.

“No, of course, I’m honored. That’s not the problem,” responded Troy still pacing.

“Then what is it, child? You look like you just found out your childhood pet died,” said the callous woman with a chuckle. Troy finally stopped and stared the woman down.

“My best friend is participating, and the academy expects me to not only fight in the tournament, they expect me to either place high, win, or help the other two place high or win, all without being discovered as a native of my homeland. I don’t see how that will be possible, my Arson will—“

“Oh, is that all? You think your little boy toy is going to recognize you? That won’t be a problem with your disguise,” said the professor.

“Professor Chanter, our bond is strong enough that I can sense his very emotions as we speak currently, making light of this isn’t funny. Your expectations are unrealistic,” said Troy in agitation, crossing her arms with a frown.

“Oh wow, I see, that is problematic,” admitted the professor.

“Yeah, I know that, but telling the administration that would most likely result in me not being able to compete,” said Troy.

“So you do want to compete?”

“Of course I do, for the first time in my life I feel like nothing can stop me. The things I’ve learned since being here put me in a category nearly all my own. Why wouldn’t I want to compete? I just don’t know if I’d be able to stay within the confines being placed on me by the school, unless we figure out a way to truly mask my presence, he is going to know it's me,” grumbled Troy, pressing her palms to her eyes.

“And by he, do you by chance mean Carter Gestalt, the young man they call Shopkeep?” Troy nodded.

“He is quite the perceptive one. Our friends in the administration that you are wary of, have the same order to get rid of him as they do for you. If I’m being honest, you two seem to be a match made by the heavens themselves,” said Professor Chanter with smile.

“Yes…” Was all Troy managed in her teacher’s direction, plumes of red washing across her cheeks.

“Although the requirements for the stages for this tournament will make the sensations you both transfer between your souls impossible to sense,” explained Professor Chanter. Her comment making Troy’s eyes widen.

“Seriously?” Troy’s entire demeanor changed in a single exhalation. She’d actually wanted to return to see Arson for so long, but couldn’t due to the school’s rules, yet the tournament offered her an opportunity she couldn’t and wouldn’t pass up.

“Young Cultivators…” said the professor with a smile and a roll of the eyes, seeing the excitement grow in the eyes of her student.

“What? I haven’t seen him in an entire season cycle. Don’t look at me like that,” said Troy. She couldn’t help it, she didn’t care if Arson wouldn’t know it was her, at the very least she would get to reach out and touch him if she wanted to, even if that touch was a punch to the face.

She not only wanted to see her best friend, she wanted to prove she was worthy of being his best friend by beating him outright in combat.

“Well then, child, I guess I should give this to you now” said Professor Chanter, lifting a hand palm upward. A swirl of lights spun in the air above her hand and a mask made of hardened light was created.

At first, Troy thought it was reflective like a mirror, only to find out that the scene she thought was being reflected from the open sky above them was actually a a projection coming from the mask itself.

Troy was enamored by the effect. The beautiful red clouds drifting softly across the face of the mask enough to make her smile. She extended her hands slowly when professor Chanter made the mask float toward her and land softly upon her fingertips.

“Each student selected is gifted a mask by the professor that chose them, and this mask is named the skies of the Tsaritsa, it seems like a perfect fit for you,” said Professor Chanter, and Troy knew how significant a moment it was for both her and her teacher. Professor Chanter had never taken on a personal student in all her years of teaching at Adroit Academy, until now.

“I don’t know what to say,” Troy said, almost in a whisper. Her eyes growing red with emotion.

“How about "Thank you, Professor Chanter. I’m going to win and make you even more untouchable a figure in this proud institution"? Or "Thank you, Professor Chanter. I appreciate all you’ve taught me and will do my best"? Or—“

“Okay, I get it, I get it. Thank you.”

“Hmm, well, I liked my examples better, but I’ll take it. Now go and get ready, the trip to Maelstrom isn’t a short one,” responded the professor with a slight bob of her head.

“Wait, what? I thought the tournament was in CloudLake City this season cycle?”

“No, the CloudLake Megaplex burned to the ground during the preliminaries, and a contest was held to see where the tournament would be hosted, and some upstart group of Cultivators managed to win from Maelstrom,.”

“Oh, wow, that is news! Do you know the name of the upstarts by chance?”

“No, not any individual's name, but the group had something to do with black holes or something like that.”

…

Chozen didn’t know what to think. The young man she followed had what she felt to be an uncountable amount of skills, none of which she’d seen him use more than once, and now that they stormed toward an active incident no less dangerous than an active battlefield, the list of what was shown by Carter only grew.

“Are things always like this in Maelstrom?” yelled Chozen in question about what they were encountering.

“Yeah,” yelled Carter with another single word response. She was beginning to believe the more questions she asked the young man, the shorter and shorter answers she would receive.

Carter led her toward a hover tram that took the employees to and from the compound they rushed toward, before hijacking the controls from the operator. She wanted to be surprised but wasn’t. The more radical the actions Carter made with every breath that passed, the less surprised Chozen became.

“Do I even want to ask?” Carter glanced back at her and shook his head in response, increasing the speed of the hover tram, the few employees left onboard, glancing between each other in alarm, not knowing what was going on.

“You do see that gate right…” Carter didn’t respond, even as the hover tram increased speed, showing no signs of coming to a stop as the flying train rushed toward the compound’s closed security wall.

Carter…?”

“Brace yourselves!” The young man’s words made Chozen’s heart skip a beat.

Please, Maiden, don’t tell me he is going to…

“Carter!”

“Everybody down,” yelled a random passenger.

The tram smashed through the gate like a battering ram. The structure folding inward like sandstone obliterated by a wrecking ball. Chunks and debris flying in every direction even as the tram crash-landed and slid to a complete stop on the compounds platform. A trench carved into the lush grass that surrounded the complex of buildings.

Chozen slowly tried to come to her feet, only to be yanked upward by a strong grip. A face made of darkness and stars greeting her before she was even able to acknowledge what had happened.

“I’m not going to stop you from whatever this is you are doing. But I’m keeping a low profile, and that won’t work if you keep yelling my name, you got that?”

Carter dropped Chozen, and rushed off, jumping through the broken glass at the front of the tram. Chozen jumped to her feet and shook her head vigorously to try and free herself of the vertigo that took over once she’d gotten upright.

She looked back to make sure no one had hurt themselves, and seeing that the few passengers only had minor bumps and bruises, she too took off toward the depths of the compound after Carter.

“Hey, wait up!”

The two ran at full speed passed many employees trying to escape the violence all around them. Before Chozen knew it, there was yet another tram in view, and she felt she already knew where this was going.

Not again… Seriously…

“You coming or not?” Chozen had slowed momentarily once she saw Carter rush onto yet another one of the flying trains, but after she saw him pause to let her catch up, she sighed and stepped into the empty vehicle.

“This isn’t going to end well, is it?”

She immediately regretted the question, seeing a large smile even through the darkness that served as Carter’s face underneath his cowled hood.

“Not a chance!”

…

Khalif did his best to stop the mess. He now felt entirely at fault for it. Though he hadn’t personally ended the lives of any guard or employee of Alister Industries, he knew the person that had done the deed, wouldn’t have been able to without his assistance that day.

The sorrow he felt would have overcome him as he closed in on the security room held inside the main building, but before he knew it a sound drew his attention. A scream so loud that he turned completely around to see where it was coming from.

Khalif turned to see a flying tram, hurtling through the air directly toward him. He teleported using his own shadow, appearing down the hall from where he’d just been. Emerging from a dark corner, now able to witness the second crash landing of a tram to take place within Alister Industries that day.

The tram smashed through the glass, flew down the hall he’d just been heading down and directly toward the security room.

“Well, that ain’t normal,” said Khalif. He rushed down the hall and after the tram even as it smashed through the security room doors.

By the time he made it to the massive hole left behind by the tram, the remainder of the guards inside had either scattered, or been petrified by the experience of nearly being run over. It was there that he saw Seven, staring at two strangers climbing free of the rubble left behind by the flying trains collision with the security mainframe.

Arson?

The black cowled figure, stumbled free of the tram, and strode unbalanced toward the security room's main station table controls, and began to take a deep breath that defied reason.

A tornado of energy moving in reverse spiraled into the mouth of the figure and the electronics within the room crumbled. The runic systems failed, and the lights all around them shut off in a blink. The only light left in the room, the electricity that now flowed into the mouth of the figure in front of him.

Khalif’s eyes flicked to another individual that flopped out of the tram more than exited with any sense of grace or purpose.

“Couldn’t leave it up to me, huh?”

The figure Khalif assumed to be Arson finally stopped and turned to him, shaking their head with a deep chuckle that sent chills down Khalif’s spine.

“No, actually I was worried about you, but you know I don’t have any aversion to unbridled destruction. I could do without all the killing for sport, but beggars choose to beg and I revel in chaos!”

The second person Khalif still couldn’t put a name to finally got to their feet and shook their head as they looked between Arson and him. Khalif pointed and Arson shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll explain later. We need to get the sparks out of here. Mr. Kim is probably already on his way here after all these alarms, and I don’t have time for this!”

Khalif nodded and glanced at Seven who lay holding his ribs as if they were broken. Khalif’s pointed a finger toward him and Arson shrugged. A potion bottle appeared in his hand after he tapped his pocket with a single finger and Arson rolled the bottle toward their orphan brother, without even pausing to look back at the slightly older young man.

“You got an exit plan?” asked Khalif. He had planned to teleport through the shadows to exit, but didn’t know if he could take both Arson and whomever the second person with him was at the same time.

“Yeah,” said Arson climbing back into the barely usable tram. The hovering train car left with just enough power to lift off the ground.

“Not again,” said the young woman rubbing her head before she looked at Khalif.

“Is he always like this?”

“Yeah, you get used to it after a while,” responded Khalif with a chuckle, stepping passed the young woman to get on the half crumpled tram, dented by its forced entry into the building’s side.

“Now that is something I don’t think I will ever believe,” said the stranger, seeming as if the last place in the entire realm she wanted to be was the tram Khalif just stepped onto.

“Trust and believe, nothing surprises me anymore, this is pretty much a below average day for us,” offered Khalif, reaching out a hand to help the young woman onto the tram.

“Oh yeah, and what would an above average day be like then,” asked the young woman, her tone voicing her obvious fear for her life, with her continued involvement. Khalif and Arson shared a look before they both spoke up at once.

“Ice cream,” said Arson.

“Cheeseburgers,” said Khalif.

The two looked at each other again before they burst into laughter, Arson forcing the tram into reverse at full speed, knocking the girl off her feet with the jerk of violent movement, as the tram sped out of the holes it’d just made and shakily bobbed through the air once more.

…

Seven lay in pain, looking around at the mess that had been made of his workplace. He popped the cork on the potion that had been left behind for him, and no one else. Counting himself lucky he drank slowly, feeling his ribs snapping back into place painfully.

“What in the bloody embers just happened here…”

He knew he was going to pay for this. His boss wasn’t the type to forgive or forget. Yet even as his body seemed to make a full recovery in a matter of moments, he only had one thought running through his mind as he continued to sip the potion in his hand.

“Ugh, cherry flavor, I hate artificial cherry flavoring…”