To let himself run was like breaking free from a freeze-frame. Every doubt, every careful calculation that had been cluttering his mind was now gone. What remained was pure electricity coursing through his veins, a release of pressure so strong it felt like his body had been waiting too long for this moment.
The jungle blurred around him as instinct resurfaced what the brain attempted to forget. Each stride was less a choice, and more of a homecoming —not to safety, but to something sharper. Something closer to who he really was beneath all the pretenses.
For this was it. His cloud nine. That sweet spot, the razor’s edge, where everything clicked into place.
Neon had felt this rush before, chased it even. That much was true. But in this jungle, with Serpents Unleashed spreading a bizarre sensation through his modified muscles, the high hit him differently. More real despite how impossible and dreamlike it all was.
Without a second’s pause, he launched himself at a towering tree looming before him. His left arm stretched almost by itself, fingers extending as they sought purchase into deep grooves of the bark. Passion truly was poison-laced. It was kind of intoxicating —the way his bones elongated, the way his muscles reshaped and multiplied mid-motion. Dense new fibers wove themselves into existence only to accommodate the additional mass.
What he once feared would’ve been an awkward, strength-sapping extension, ended up nothing but effortless. The enhanced musculature was more than enough to bear his full weight without anything as close as a strain. Recoil alone snapped him upwards with a power his lanky frame had no business generating.
Once he had enough momentum, he let go to re-establish himself. And with only just a shove of dexterity and confidence, Neon was already standing a good bunch of feet above ground.
“Oh no. No no no no.” Gnaw took clear notice, jerking around like a panicked primate. That whole plan of providing support to Soreisan? Forgotten entirely as he just wobbled up there. Still too far to reach, but close enough for fear. His reaction made Neon grin. “Rei! You promised I wouldn’t be in danger!”
Right. Half his attention to this pitiful critter, and the other half to multitasking. Neon called upon the interface to finally quiet down the first notification.
A map extended at the corner of his vision —vast and detailed, marked with topographical features anyone could assign meaning after playing just one strategy game. The dense jungle was only one part of a larger, mixed biome. It included desert and rocky peaks among other things, broken up by rivers or other forms of natural boundaries.
Four dots pulsed with life inside it. Two clustered together, Nomine and him, since Neon doubted they belonged to Gnaw or Soreisan. Two others flickered much, much farther north, so distant they might as well be a lifetime away. That wasn’t all, though.
“Says here there are 54 teams currently active.” Neon called out casually, his enhanced arm retracting as he watched Gnaw winding up a gurgle. The process seemed quite painful. “We seem to have one of those on radar.”
Even through the chaos of clashing steel below, Nomine’s response emerged in Neon’s mind with crystalline clarity, including its characteristic serenity. Were they mentally linked? A bit creepy, sure, but it certainly made things easier.
“Figured as much from your number.” The duel with Soreisan apparently required only a little more mental bandwidth than breathing. Not like Neon had any time or need to pay attention. “If my assumptions are correct, should be 100 teams with 200 players total.”
>> “I’d be surprised if some haven’t been eliminated already, but it’s also safe to say that not all have been deployed yet.”
Warmth expanded through Neon’s chest despite the cold and disinterested delivery. They were actually communicating. Working together, or at least, as much as someone with Nomine’s personality allowed.
It was a feeling he couldn’t get enough of.
His elation got spoiled by the gross sounds of Gnaw’s retches. They quickly evolved into more hurled vomit, a nasty glob now sailing towards him like some plague-colored comet, complete with a trail of nauseating vapor.
From watching Nomine and Soreisan weather those shots, Neon was fairly certain he could tank one or two, as repellent as the prospect was. But… What if their resistance came from some unseen Augment? What if his unprotected flesh dissolved more easily? Yeah. Hardly worth the gamble.
Therefore he didn’t risk it. The jungle’s middle canopy practically brimmed with escape routes anyway —three-dimensional mazes of climbing lianas and twisting branches that wove together into dense configurations. Balance was a suggestion. Neon didn’t even care if anything he stepped on was truly solid. He had Serpents Unleashed in the case he ever slipped or missed a step.
It enabled him into a daring confidence. Maybe even recklessness.
Before he knew it, Neon flowed through the hanging garden as if he could walk on air, each leap and climb carrying him closer to his panicking target. Gnaw’s firing rate accelerated into a rattled, desperate tempo. But aiming with your mouth at someone moving this erratically was probably nothing fun.
Projectiles took turns missing the branches Neon had just jumped from, or miscalculating which path he’d take next. All of them ended splattering against innocent greenery, not even grazing their objective.
The repeated failures sent the poor sap into strategic meltdown.
While Neon approached with nimble certainty, Gnaw could barely even manage a half-crawl, half-slide on his side. Every crab step made him wobble precariously on branches that bent and groaned beneath his feet, arms windmilling for stability that never quite came.
Honestly, he looked like he might fall off on his own if given enough of a scare.
“Bahaha! How did you even get up here in the first place?” Neon called out, now level with his objective despite there being some gap left to cross. A grin had claimed a stubborn residence on his face —one he couldn’t wipe no matter how much he tried to. “Did that buddy of yours have to give you a piggyback ride? Gosh, wish I could’ve seen that.”
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Taunting him that way shattered what little composure remained in Gnaw. His next convulsion wracked him with a noise beyond disgusting, like if his throat was some hellish, unclogging drain. Probably the last dregs of puke the poor guy had left in him.
Dregs that did pose a bit of a problem, when the coughs scattered the bile into an uneven toxic curtain. There was really no easy avoiding it. Unless you had monkey blood. And Neon was making a very convincing argument for that.
He dropped backwards from his perch without any hesitation, and then latched onto it with his elongated arm like some oversized gibbon. The shift in momentum sent his body swinging in a pendulum arc right beneath the acid rain, releasing before they struck down to catapult himself skywards.
For one crystalline heartbeat, the world compressed into pure sensation. Wind carved strongly through his peach-dyed hair as he crested above the canopy’s edge, peeking into the golden sunlight beyond. His pulse hammered fast with the thrill of defying physics through audacity alone. Caught between triumph and disaster, skill and instinct alike bowing to the electric simplicity of being utterly, completely alive.
Neon selected the second notification mid-jump, bright lettering overlaying the first-rate backdrop of his approaching, shocked target.
<>
Complete one Condition of Clearance for extraction.
Time Remaining: 118:48:15.
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They’re always watching you.
<>
But indiscriminate violence begets consequences.
<>
It will yield no growth.
Cryptic, as always. How come whoever designed this system felt so compelled to make everything sound like fortune cookie philosophy? Dramatic flair was cool and all, but not when they completely skipped the actual tutorial part of the damned thing.
He hoped that Nomine could make things clearer. Later. Right now he kind of had a landing to take care of.
The fantasy and the reality of aerial combat were apparently two very different beasts. If things had gone the way he’d envisioned them —like in some action game sequence— he would’ve descended with a flying kick to send Gnaw out cold across the branches. What unfolded was considerably less graceful.
Neon pretty much collided directly against Gnaw with all the elegance of a traffic accident. His shoulders met the convict’s midsection painfully to quickly devolve all into immediate chaos. Not like he could resent the hit too much, since everything tilted too dangerously for any self-congratulation.
Wood bit into Neon’s palms as he clung for dear life, skin burning from the sudden arrest of his fall. A plunge from this height would be atrocious, even when accounting for the canopy and soft ground to cushion it.
For Gnaw there was no saving purchase.
His prison uniform fluttered like a distress flag as he tumbled into the impending abyss, eyes wide with the terrible realization that a world of hurt awaited.
Such sight brought forth a bundle of unpleasant memories, wounds still too fresh and raw. Falling again. Fear. Terror. Regret. They all crashed into Neon at full force and at once, chest constricting as if invisible hands had wrapped around his lungs and squeezed. Sure, this was different. Gnaw was his enemy. To let him tumble down to his death was probably not something he should blame himself for.
Logic whispered to him that this was natural selection. Survival of the fittest. The harsh mathematics of battle. Yet his arm elongated to the convict’s direction before conscious thought could interfere.
Grip. Contact. Catch. The sickening pull of a full human’s body weight straining the socket of his shoulder —strengthened yet still feeling insufficient— as Gnaw’s ankle locked into his grasp. The branch Neon clung to groaned, bark splitting under their combined mass. But it held.
Yes, he had failed at this once. Failed Alice, failed himself. He wouldn’t let it happen ever again.
Safely stopping Gnaw’s fall proved beyond even his augmented capabilities. Gravity had other plans, making the convict swing beneath him before slamming face-first into the trunk they both depended on. The impact reverberated through the wood like a struck bell.
It was ugly. Gnaw’s body bounced off the bark brutally and then hung limp like a ragdoll. Blood trickled down from his flattened nose, and his breathing came out in shallow, irregular gasps. He was alive, though. So yahoo. Neon guessed some karma was in line for daring to go against them.
In order to maintain appearances, Neon forced down the relief that flooded him before speaking to Nomine again. The weight straining his shoulder was considerable, but manageable. They were safe.
“Our main objective…” He exhaled, glancing at the convict dangling from his grip. Touching a creature like him was more than a little gross, but what could he do about it now? Maybe dropping him from this height wouldn’t be so bad, if he did it gently enough. “… Is to eradicate the one team that’s marked on our map.”
“I understand.” The voice filtered through their connection with the usual frost, though its owner’s attention remained fixed on the opponent below. Soreisan appeared to have grown all the more frantic now that he had lost his partner. Or maybe it was just exhaustion, something Nomine seemed immune to.
Yet, despite that softspoken and calm demeanor, the question that Nomine posed next made Neon’s spine crawl. So intimidating in its simplicity.
“And is there any penalty for killing the others?”
The inquiry felt like a winter blade cutting through the humid jungle air. Even from his perch, Neon felt the temperature plummet. He wasn’t alone in that fright.
Soreisan’s shoulders visibly stiffened as the shift in atmospheric pressure was registered on some instinctive level. The assassin’s movements stuttered for just an instant. Barely a heartbeat. But enough to reveal that the subtle transformation Nomine was undergoing didn’t go unnoticed.
Like a machine preparing to shed its safety protocols, or a predator finally deciding that playtime was over.
Lying to him here sounded spectacularly stupid. The thought of Nomine easily unveiling any attempt at deceit was a scary prospect, and Neon’s imagination refused to explore it any further.
“Uh… No, I don’t think so.”
“Perfect.”
The single word emerged from Nomine’s lips like a judge’s gavel, final and absolute. Next came the executioner’s blade preparing to strike. Black Metal shifted in Nomine’s grip —no more than an inversion of the angle it was kept on, yet it somehow conveyed the impression of a dam of violence about to burst.
Gone was the casual intent of defense, the almost bored deflection of Soreisan’s repeated attacks. In its place was something terrifying. The katana in Nomine’s hands seemed to drink in the dappled sunlight now, its impossible blackness becoming somehow deeper. Like a ravenous and cruel event horizon.
Genuine fear flickered in Soreisan’s eyes.
And the jungle held its breath as Nomine stepped forward, no longer content in letting his opponent dictate the rhythm of their duel any further.