The eight remaining Heroes were hooping and hollering as they chased the Non-Heroes through the pines. They fired off abilities aimed over the heads of their prey to illuminate the dark forest by the light of lightning bolts and starbeams. The brief explosions of light prevented Natsuko’s eyes from adjusting to the darkness, turning the world into a pitch black globe out of which terrifying visions flashed. She could barely make out the presences of Kane, Yuna, and Daisy though they were only one tree over in the line of trees they were hiding behind.

“An ambush isn’t going to work. At least not like last time,” Natsuko said, unconcerned about being overheard amid the screams and sadistic laughter.

“Let’s go in hard and fast. Kill ‘em all before they know what’s happening,” Yuna replied.

“In the dark!? For all we know we might hit each other,” Daisy replied.

“And do what instead? Sit here and let them pick off the Non-Heroes? Those are Shikijima folk they’re chasing. My people,” Yuna said.

“How about this,” Natsuko said. “Daisy, you put up a wall between the Non-Heroes and their attackers. I’ll fly in on Black Fire and attack from the rear. Yuna will attack head on. Kane will light things up so we can see. That way we’ll only have two people attacking and two people supporting and Yuna and I won’t be near each other.”

Daisy pinched her nose and exhaled. “Something feels wrong, but I can’t think of another way to do this. Are we sure we want to—”

“Yes,” Yuna said, eyes fixed on the hunt.

“Then we go as soon as Daisy throws up the wall,” Natsu said.

“Got that Kane?” Daisy asked.

He flashed her some finger guns.

“No, not finger guns. Do you understand the plan?” she asked.

“Yes, I do,” Kane said.

Daisy had a bad feeling about turning Kane loose, but it wasn’t like he was a baby who needed coddling. All Heroes were summoned with fully-formed personalities able to make their own decisions. So why did she feel like she needed to keep him on a short leash? It was because he reminded Daisy of Shrike, that was why. He reminded her of when their plans at the Card Tournament backfired and someone died. In her mind he was—and had always been—like a muscle that ached when you got close to something that injured it once. Kane was a living reminder that they could still fail.

“On your mark, Daisy,” Yuna said, staring fiercely at her.

There was nothing to do now, Daisy thought. She’d already dragged Kane into this and whatever happened now was on her. There was no alternative where they crawled into a hole and hoped the world wouldn’t end. Nor had there ever been. There was nothing to do but fight.

Daisy squeezed her compass and the ground trembled as a curved stone wall burst from the ground taking whole trees and bushes with it. Depth was hard to discern in the dark and two Non-Heroes ended up caught on the closer side of the wall to the Heroes. Shaken from their revelry, the invading Heroes dimension-jumped the two laggards without ceremony.

A line of bright white flame like a fluffy wreath hanging from the sky illuminated the forest path as clear as day and drew the attention of the invading Heroes. As soon as they were distracted, Yuna sprinted out of the treeline, FDJ rod cocked at her side like a katana. The first of the Heroes had barely enough time to look around before Yuna lunged and struck him with the end. His teammates turned and with horror realized they were no longer the pursuers but the pursued.

The plan for Kane to add light to the battlefield collapsed on contact with the enemy. Natsuko and Daisy were confronted not with a lack of light, but a glut of it as the seven remaining Heroes threw all their abilities at their two overpowered attackers. Without intending to, their adversaries discovered the same secret Team Natsuko had two years prior: That the visual and auditory effects of an ability were sometimes more valuable than the ability itself. Natsuko felt herself pelted with chip damage that hardly mattered, but the once-in-a-millennia starbeams and fire pinwheels and giant tornadoes coming at her reduced the world to a singular chaos of light and sound. Embarrassingly, the only thing she found herself capable of was swinging her bottle in wide arcs, hoping to clip any Heroes sneaking up on her.

On the opposite side of the bubble of chaos, Yuna was sprinting perpendicular to the battle, hoping to get out of range and figure out her next move. Bolting through a storm of Elemental forces, her battle-trained muscles screamed at her to duck and duck she did. Yuna thought it was a Wind ability she evaded until she caught sight of a jagged metal rod swung with enough force to create a wake of air. Seeing an opening, she stomped the heel of her geta into the dirt and used the opposite foot to jerk her momentum sharp left, thrusting her rod into the chaos.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

There was a small thump in Yuna’s wrist as the rod caught something before it turned into the jagged polygons signaling the end of that entity’s ability to interact with Po-Lin. Her free hand caught her attacker’s rod before it dropped to the ground and she swirled it around until the tip faced down, giving her the option of a dual-wielded back swing.

“What’s wrong? Not having fun when you’re fighting equals?” Yuna asked in a mocking tone to the remaining Heroes.

Abilities went on cooldown after they failed to deal any significant damage to Yuna and Natsuko. Now the problem became a lack of light. Everyone’s retinas had been seared by the fireworks display so when darkness fell again it became no less dangerous to be caught by a stray rod. One rod swung out of the darkness and Yuna barely got her stolen rod up in time to block it. As soon as she had, her vision filled with a purple glow from Kane's Direct Current. At the spot where his ability ended, a ball of plasma exploded outwards, striking at the Heroes and accidentally killing one outright from Elemental damage. Across the illuminated field she saw Natsuko use some Jack ability to push someone into her rod. Down to four enemy combatants, the battlefield was tidier. There weren’t even enough now to be worth taunting.

“How about we take one hostage?” Natsuko said. “See what they know?”

“They don’t know shit. It’s a waste of time,” Yuna replied, rounding on one of the two remaining on her side of the field.

In the rapidly dimming afterglow of Direct Current, Yuna saw her next target was Katerina, a Sibe-Lander Ghazi Hero. Her former teammate's amber-colored eyes watered with fear at the hulking Samurai woman coming after her.

“Y-You won’t end the world! Even if we can’t stop you, the Top Heroes will!” Katerina said, her rod pointed at Yuna, trembling in her grip.

Yuna snorted. “You haven’t had a shot at the top in three years, Kitty, and you’re still gonna dance to the Yishang’s tune? You’re an idiot.”

“Do you even know what messing with the Yishang’s rules will do!? Is this a fucking game to you like that Shikijima revolution shit was!?”

Katerina’s voice was shrill and screeching. It was not at all the dulcet voice Yuna remembered from when they had been teammates, talking late into the night about what they wanted from this world. But there was enough of the poor girl remaining that Yuna found it hard to strike at her.

At that moment, it finally clicked with Yuna what all that science-y nonsense from Shuixing meant: The nightmarish sensation of the battle, the awful feeling of cannibalism she felt watching Katerina’s team hunting the Non-Heroes, and she hunting them in turn. This was a war between them and the Heroes still loyal to the Yishang, but they all shared a common origin point in the Central Blah-dee-blah Shuixing was always going on about. It was a civil war, just like in Shikijima. They were all pieces of the Central Thingy shaving off parts of itself.

Yuna growled and clenched the rod. “Fuck me… Kitty, just run. I don’t want to kill you.”

“What do you think tinkering with the Yishang’s rules is going to do!?” Katerina screamed back at her. "You might as well kill me now rather than make me wait!"

Her former teammate thrust the rod at her, but it was a slow and weak strike with no heart behind it. Yuna would've mocked it had she not been feeling the same exact thing. Behind them, Natsuko mopped up the remaining Heroes. Katerina no doubt felt the noose tightening around her.

“I don’t know how you found out,” Yuna said, “but I’ll bet you no one mentioned the Yishang are planning to shut everything down anyway. Whether you stop us or not, everything’s gone in a week. You, me, Po-Lin. Everything except the Heroes specially picked by the Yishang to move over to their new world. Any guesses whether you’re on that list?”

Katerina shook her head, the long, straight blonde hair Yuna had liked so much about her tossing in front of her face like a veil.

“You’re out of your mind, Yuna. You always were. I’m not running, I’m not joining you, and I’m sure as hell not turning my back on the demi-gods I owe my existence to. Either you kill me, or I kill you,” Katerina said, her knuckles curling around the rod.

“I’m not going to kill you, Kitty,” Yuna said, despising the softness sneaking its way into her voice.

“So be it,” Katerina said.

With neither technique nor killing intent, Katerina flailed at Yuna, her FDJ rod missing her by several feet and leaving her open to a counterattack Yuna couldn’t muster. Several yards away, Kane was coming over with his own rod in hand.

“Back off, Kane,” Yuna yelled.

Kane stopped. Katerina jerked her head and caught sight of him. Turning her back on Yuna, she charged Kane. Yuna sprinted after her, preparing to tackle and pin Katerina down so she could talk some sense into her.

On the opposite end of the field, having dispatched the last of her targets, Natsuko threw a ball of fire onto the grass for light. A bonfire spread across the center of the forest path and cast dancing shadows against the earthen wall Daisy had summoned. In the flickering light, she watched the last survivor of the Hero incursion swing backwards out of instinct and hit Yuna. She, Kane, Daisy, and the killer herself looked on in frozen terror as Yuna distorted into intersecting planes lit entirely differently than the ambient light so that they stuck out as solid colors of Yuna’s icy-blue color palette. A second later, Yuna was gone.

Daisy screamed something Natsuko couldn’t hear and sprinted out of the treeline while the Hero that killed Yuna was still dazed by her actions and slammed her rod into the girl. And the first Hero incursion was concluded.