Alexander remembered the conversation with Sage, just before the Tormented Flesh.

Sage:

we believe you’re a candidate for a second emergence

Alexander:

of course

Sage:

figured it out didn’t ya?

Alexander:

i mean i was curious about how the system and slayers operated who doesnt?

it was kinda strange knowing i was only a d6, below average, while people i knew were ranked higher

and they were dumbasses

Sage:

so…

Alexander:

why did you want to test me?

gonna hook me up to some machine?

Sage:

yeah that was the plan

we don’t have much research about second emergence slayers so we wanted to use you as a test subject

we wanted to see if we could predict your true rank

Alexander:

and were you going to offer me a place in angels?

Sage:

sera was, yup yup

Alexander:

doesnt make sense though, this is a pretty terrible place to train and prepare me

let alone everyone else on my team

yeah theyre high-rankers if they wanted to be but why now? why not keep us safe?

Sage:

sera’s decision

Alexander:

you arent telling me the full story

what are you hiding from me?

Sage:

nothing

Alexander:

fine i dont want to cause an argument now

Alexander had little time to contemplate on this revelation. After all, it’d been confirmed early this morning—Jesus, felt like months. Truthfully he had suspected that he was different from everyone else, from the moment he found out about his Growth Potential.

You had access to the Slayer System at the age of sixteen, so when he was in school at the time (before the Hangzhou Disaster), everyday there’d be someone revealing what rank they’d be. Most of the times it was the average: in the C’s; every now and then however, you would get gems.

“Haha! I’m an A-Rank!” or “Holy shit, I’m an S!”, which only occurred in one or two kids in every school. There were programs in place for the lucky winners: an advanced curriculum putting them on track to join a Systemic Works program in any college of their choosing, full-ride, and if everything went well they’d join a Fabel Guild.

Leona had been offered dozens of scholarships and guild sponsorships being an SS-Rank practically. She had countless stories of being approached out in the wild: men in business suits coming to her high school, approaching her aunt, constantly spamming her email with interview requests, and so on.

And Alexander was a measly D-Rank. Had been.

A Second Emergence was a common dream you had, like hitting a grand slam when the game was tied and the bases were loaded, or suddenly coming into wealth by winning the lottery. Only this time, it’d be coming onto sudden power, earning a golden ticket to the highest echelon of society. You could prove all your naysayers wrong—everyone. The fuckers who bullied you, thought you wouldn’t amount to anything, let them watch and weep as you become one of the best swords in this world.

You could be like Kosmos. Who couldn’t progress beyond an F5 due to his sickly body. What was he now? the strongest Slayer in the world, one of the founders of Angels Guild (currently going solo and had been for over a decade), the only SSS-Rank. Who led the Red Gate Expedition during the Great Crisis and emerged stronger. His feats placed him on the same level as Primordial, perhaps higher than that.

With a development like his, you could be a legend. Just as long as your head wasn’t up your ass, like many in Oasis Guild had been before the scandal brought them down.

And here Alexander was, caught in circumstances he never desired yet so many dreamt of. Life—Fate—had a funny way of doing things.

[EXPEDITION STATUS]

HEAVY CASUALTIES TAKEN

“Ugh…” Alexander stood up, dazed, just like he had been after getting caught in that high-magnitude earthquake earlier. The world sounded muted again, as if you had just woken up in the hospital from some horrible accident. Your vision was white at the edges, blurry at the middle, and who the hell were you again?

It felt different this time though, felt it right in his stomach like he swallowed a whole basketball.

The missile had directly hit the forcefield, composed of at least six different magics and had about three layers to it, colored and shaped differently. The initial cast wasn’t enough to mitigate the initial impact with two layers shattering instantly, and the last one held on just barely.

Alexander had protected Althea with his own body. Shielders shouted. The final layer, that which separated complete oblivion and life, brightened. Strengthened, having mana poured into it. Doing this had caused the shielders to dangerously drain their own mana to life-threatening levels. Their skin had turned paper white, their veins discolored and bleached like dying corals. But in that pursuit did the barrier protect them.

Cracks had crisply snapped across the forcefield, radiating outwards, making a stained glass mosaic. But it held, it held and held and the shielders screamed and there was nothing else to do but watch and pray.

And humanity had won. This time. In this place. The missile, having lost too much of its energy, dissipated and faded like a dying candlelight. Immediately after the field collapsed and the shielders as well, each considered to be incapacitated by the Slayer System. Ding after ding.

Just having artillery that close was discombobulating. The earth-tearing noise, the screaming shockwaves, Alexander was sick and tired of having new experiences, new sensations overcoming him.

Surrounding structures had been damaged—some had fallen—as collateral damage from the missile; well, more damaged than they already were, essentially pounding dust into a finer consistency. And the air was noticeably darker, made it that more difficult for Alexander to see, now, with blurry vision. The smell was fucking awful too, made up of smoke carried by wind from across the formation.

Alexander patted his sister’s back, helped her up, and from the corner of his eye Victor stumbled onto his feet, banging his hand against an ear as though water had clogged it. Voices were muted, distant like usual. Slayers yelling at blue screens. Officers on radios, or trying to find someone with radios. Squad leaders trying to maintain order.

Despite this an eerie calm fell on Ordo. This was the quietest time since the operation began. No more chaotic scrambling, no more constant warfare, hearing galeforce winds tear through the area or red artillery bolts falling from the clouds, or the bell-like magic ringing for miles.

Many had been there when Tewfik caused those earthquakes. Had to get out fast. Move to somewhere safer, where the ground wouldn't open up and swallow you and you wouldn't get crushed by falling debris. Well, if you could move in the first place. Some were lucky, like Alexander, when they miraculously pulled through without injury. And many were unlucky.

Alexander looked around the dreary street with soreness drilling into his legs, saw shellshocked people. Several Slayers stared wide-eyed, absent of life and color, as they mindlessly scrolled through their screens, reading the names of the dead and wounded for the third time it seemed. Soldiers sat down, paced, kept moving, too out-of-their-element to help, too weak to do anything substantial.

This might’ve been the straw that broke the camel’s back, the final uncontrollable situation that had done them in.

It wasn’t clear how extensive the damage was but it was bad, probably worse than Tewfik’s ultimate attack.

A far-off, distant scream rang.

He patted Althea’s back again. “Stay here for me. Make sure the others are okay.”

“What are you doing—? Hey, Alex?!”

Alexander began jogging down the block, going around a Slayer Team sitting on the curb, hopping over a fallen lamp-post. Someone shouted for him from behind, someone pissed. A glance over the shoulder told him it was Victor. It didn’t matter what that asshole thought or what he wanted.

Turning the corner brought Alexander to a sight that was altogether horrific and familiar, as though along the way he’d stepped through a portal—like ducking into a closet—and he became his seventeen-year-old self again. Innocent to all things wicked, to the world. Back then he’d been bloody and hurt in several places, standing in the midst of disaster.

His whole life had gone wrong that day from the moment the TV broadcasted the emergency alert message, had heard his phone buzz off the table, and then the unhuman, gnarly roar followed by a screeching scream. The memories replayed on fast-forward, each day a frame. The beginning, locked up at their rental while Mom and Dad ventured outside; terrified, when Dad faced a band of orcs by himself; running, running, trying to reach the shelters; Mom died, the shelter got overrun after that; and Dad walked into the flames and left his children behind; then the weeks after, surviving, hiding, stealing and killing. Couldn't trust anyone. No one.

Alexander pressed a hand against his head.

The memories were more vivid now. Clawing at him. Wanting to tear him piece-by-piece just as they had before. How many streets had been ravaged like this? Fires within people’s businesses, within their homes, corpses thrown onto the sidewalks, random organs and limbs everywhere, vehicles turned over and gutted and burnt. Only now the streets were dropped in a permanent darkness. And craters, chasms, were commonplace.

People were dying. The world looked like it was ending. Throughout Hangzhou, Alexander had thought so. There was nothing more dreadful than feeling powerless—being powerless—having your agency stripped away and your life fucked with like God had a grudge against you in particular.

For the longest time, Alexander had felt weak and useless. On his knees, on his belly, watching people get hurt.

The same traumatic feeling was creeping up his spine now.

He couldn’t be like that again.

“Alex!” Victor grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. “What are you doing?!”

Alexander blinked a few times. Victor’s face was still blurry. “This is fucked up.”

“Yeah, no shit, man! Doesn’t mean you can run off randomly for no reason! You okay in the head?” Victor tapped his skull to make a point.

Another scream rang. Sounded both close and far.

The two looked at its general direction.

Alexander stared for a while.

“What are you thinking?” asked Victor, who must’ve been startled by his expression.

Drums banged in his head. His eyesight was shot, body all sore, and if he exerted himself for a minute more he’d fold on the spot. But people were out there, hurting, in more pain and grief than he was. And unlike him they were alone and confused, surrounded by a world that was once promised to them, like a lone child watching his home burn down.

“I’m gonna get whoever I can,” Alexander told him, “and you will get everyone the fuck out of here.”

“What the hell are you saying—?”

“I’ll be right with you—“

“Seriously, hey—!” Victor pushed him a little. “You seriously tryna go out there, alone? How are you gonna bring ‘em back?“

“I’ll find a way,” Alexander answered but he was unsure if his tone sounded confident.

Victor lowered his head and hissed out a curse. “Fuck me, fine! I’m coming with you—“

“You can’t—“

“Why the fuck not?”

“You and Chunhua are the only ones here I can trust. You have to get my team, yours, the entire fucking department—get them out. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine but your friends aren’t—“

“You’re one of us,” Victor said, teeth tightly wound. “You have to come home too.”

Alexander inhaled, took in a puff of smoke and hacked it out. “I-I will, and I’ll come back and it wouldn’t take a moment. It won’t take a moment, I promise.”

Victor stood there, just about every part of him was tense, and he stared at Alexander like he was some sort of freak—yeah, not wrong for thinking that. “This is fuckin’ stupid and you know it.”

“No shit.” Nothing about this was rational.

And judging from the look in Victor’s eyes, he knew he couldn’t say a thing to convince this freak. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Yeah.” Alexander nodded, turned back and saw the smoke clouds getting larger, and distantly red shone inside. This was so fucking stupid. Alexander nodded again. “Yeah, for sure.”

Victor coughed, wiped away some dirt on his cheek. He stood there for a second and squinted, eyes clamped together from the stinging fumes in the violent air, thinking about something, then he opened his mouth. Nothing came of it. Just the crease of his lips, a small, trembling nod, and he turned around and made off, returning to the evacuation site.

Another tremor rocked everything. Alexander managed to balance himself, staying on his two feet. Yeah, this is so fucking dumb. Althea will yell at me for this later. Shit, Leo will scream.

Alexander opened the Slayer System and looked into the [Private Channel] for this special operation. Sage had reported that the moderation program was down earlier.

From the recent chatter, it was safe to say that it was still down. The program was spamming the chat with “ERROR: Unauthorized function!” then spitting out coordinates alongside the name of the Slayer who’d inputted said coordinates. Multiple times, for multiple people. And sometimes Alexander saw the names of military soldiers too.

If he had to guess, the error was dependent on one of the functions that Sage’d programmed: the ‘HELP’ command. The Slayer System had this feature embedded but you needed to access the [Map] for that, where you could attract the attention of nearby Slayers. That was inefficient for this operation as it dealt with thousands in a single place.

So Sage implemented it into her tool, where the program should’ve analyzed the location, cross-referenced that with nearby Slayers in the area, and gave new orders. If the last part couldn’t be executed, then it would spit the coordinates out in the [Private Channel] and hope that someone could get to them.

The cause could be a lot of things honestly: the Slayer System failure when the Comets had revealed their true forms, too many people inputting too many commands, or the situation had changed too much and too quickly for the program to catch up—or the most likely option: all of the above.

Meaning the [Private Channel] was unreliable and been like that for a while. The Slayers in need would’ve recognized this right away, so as a result…

Alexander pulled up the [Map] of the area. About a thousand dots of different colors popped up. All too close to one another. He zoomed in and tapped a few. Some pings were made ten minutes ago, five minutes, seven, eight, four, two…

He gritted his teeth.

From the volume of Slayers, the [Map] couldn’t be relied on either. Sage had said to use it as a back-up, and many had. To a debilitating degree.

And all of this wasn’t accounting for one other major group: the Army. Soldiers could not access the Slayer System; the best they had were radios but not like they could be depended on. Even with today’s advancements in technology, it was impossible for ordinary people to connect to the System. For these guys, the most they could do was report their location via radio, and the operator would send that information to Sage, who had something set up to automatically deliver that to the program.

Which was currently freaking out.

In summary: communications were still trashed.

“Alright,” he muttered to himself, “guess I have to do it the hard way.”

The ground shook once again for what it felt like the one-hundredth time, and he looked towards the direction of the current fight. West of here. Wherever “here” was.

Alexander entered Hell again, this time of complete choice of his own, willed by the pain in his legs which reminded him that he was still alive. He found all the same sights; sometimes, he’d catch phantoms of his past self, about a few inches shorter and less built and drenched in sweat and dirt, desperately scurrying around like a sewer rat. All while living in complete shame.

No more, he thought. No more.

He was a street or two beyond the battle now. Just over a mountain range of debris was Death and only high-rankers could enter that place and leave with their lives intact. The actual struggle was hidden to him but that was no matter. Where Alexander stood, he was content without the entertainment.

“Help…” weakly pled a voice. “Help…”

A Slayer had his lower half trapped underneath a pile of rubble. Alexander darted over, patting his chest for comfort. “Let’s see if I can get you out of here, okay? I’m no healer but I can tell you to take deep breaths.

“One—” Alexander inhaled, tried tugging the man out from underneath but failed. He was trapped trapped. “—two. Dammit. Okay, one more time!” He found a solid hold of the pile, a bunch of rebar and concrete that he could (probably) lift using his Power. He braced, lifted and pushed enough junk off. Enough where the Slayer was free.

Alexander fell on his ass afterwards, heaving. “Shit—! Easy as pie, right?” He coughed. “Fuck…”

The Slayer raised his arm and waved as best he could. “Sorta hurting here…”

“Yeah, sorry.” Alexander picked himself back up, and the ground shook, telling him this wasn’t a safe place to be. He dragged the Slayer out, found that both his lower legs were smashed in. From his [Inventory] he took out a [Healing Potion], uncorked it, and thrusted it into the man’s hands. “Gonna carry you out, can you drink that by yourself?”

He nodded. Although his hands were trembling, he gladly drank the potion as Alexander lifted him up bridal-style and took him elsewhere.

A street opposite from where they were, a small courtyard had miraculously been untouched. By that, no buildings had fallen nor looked like they were going to fall. Alexander placed the Slayer against a bench, smiled when he saw the [Healing Potion] was empty.

“What’s your plan for—hak!—getting me outta here?” the Slayer asked.

Alexander shrugged, looked around, opened a [Survival Kit] which had a medkit inside. Not the military-kind but the good-enough kind. Then it dawned on him that he had next-to-nothing in terms of actual medical training.

“...Shit, how fresh are you?” the Slayer followed, noticing.

“What’s your name?” replied Alexander. He knew how to wrap gauze but knew nothing about crush injuries.

“Huh?”

“Name.”

“Rivet,” he answered.

Alexander smirked and pointed to himself. “Shen. Alexander Shen, that Pseudo from earlier.”

Rivet had a pained chuckle. “You fucker. You’re that Pseudo everyone’s talking about—hak!”

“Yup. Well…” After digging through the medkit, he only confirmed his suspicions: he wasn’t any good with this. “...my idea was gathering anyone I can find here and get a teleporter on our asses prompto. Otherwise, all I could give you are potions.”

“Why are you… Why are you here?” asked Rivet, sincerely.

A brief hesitation overtook him. “Because right here is No Man’s Land and someone has to come get you.”

But from the look in the Slayer’s eyes, Alexander answered the wrong question and he knew it.

Patting Rivet’s shoulder, Alexander assured him that he’ll return and made off, leaving the medkit there, searching for more people to recover as the world shook and the buildings with it.

The danger of catching concrete or a red bolt was high, stupidly high—hell, the battle could suddenly divert in his direction and kill him right there. That’d be unlucky.

Let’s hope otherwise then.

A soldier was laying on the ground, rebar stuck his side, glass in his neck.

I don’t know what to call this. What I’m doing. Repentance? Wanting redemption? An act of heroism?

Another had been hiding in a car, hurt all over.

Maybe it’s what Victor said: something stupid. I’m no hero at all, and this will get me killed.

A Slayer with one arm laid almost motionless, chest heaving.

But I’ve been through this before. I’ve been tossed around, chased out, backed into a corner, fucked with. I was a toy, a pretty little marionette strung from one event from the next. I have a lot of regrets about that time. Things I would’ve done different had I known better, been better.

One soldier was folded against a fallen table inside a shop.

Mom had told me to be kind and loyal because the world needs more men like that. And Dad? Dad had taught me strength, had taught me how to protect everyone I loved. As their darling son, I promised them that. Had promised. And I went and broke it. Because people went bad and I went worse.

Someone, a Slayer, limped over to him.

It made me realize I mean fucking nothing in this world. You get no dues for existing and thinking so will give you more grief. Fate, God, you could believe in them as easily as you hate them.

Crawling, a desperate soldier was trying to find somewhere safe.

So how could a kid like me cope with that?

“Easy easy,” said Alexander, kneeling in front of a trooper with her arm cut up, alongside other things. “It looks bad, feels bad, and what I’m going to say sounds bad but no more bad things will happen to you. I promise.”

You do it step-by-step, slowly realizing the world has always been round and the calendar still has three-hundred-sixty-five days in a year. And the sun doesn’t revolve around us. It never had.

Alexander looked around at the courtyard. Twenty people so far. He contacted Sage directly and spoke into the System: “Message: Send a teleporter, preferably a group teleporter, to the following coordinates…”

A teleporter named Initiate responded.

To this day, I don’t completely understand how I feel about Hangzhou, and I probably never will. And that’s alright. Sometimes you need to accept not getting an answer. Maybe I’ll never forgive myself for acting out in High Home, hurting Uncle Ali, Thea, Juna, everyone. But I don’t regret confronting Reynold. I just wasn’t in a good headspace to deal with the consequences.

After Initiate arrived, Alexander told her, “I’m going out. Message me if anything goes wrong.”

And maybe I’ll continue to act self-depreciating even though I have so much going for me. I’m working on that. But I have to keep going—I need to. I’ll have my moments. There’ll be times when my body is too tired to carry on and everything in my head is telling me to give up, but I can’t. I refuse to give into weakness.

“Thank you…” said a soldier he carried in.

He shook his head and motioned to Initiate. “No, thank her. She’s getting you out. I’m just telling her that you exist.”

Althea and Vernon showed me that they’re stronger. After surviving the initial shitshow, after witnessing the Tormented Flesh come to life, they are still here, fighting, risking their lives and refusing to bow down to whatever God throws at them. I couldn’t do that when I was their age. I’d been scared, disillusioned, lost. I had grieved.

“Shen!” cried Initiate, who looked tired. “How much longer can you keep doing this?”

He shrugged, not really sure either. He thought he’d collapse by now. “We’ll go as long as we can.”

But because of them, I can see the world for what it is. What it always had been, before and after Hangzhou. For all its mountains ranges and river valleys, the blue seas, the great plains and golden deserts…

Alexander took a [Myriad Strengths Pill] he had, which increased all stats by three for a short amount of time. “Just a little bit more. I can go a little bit longer.”

The world begins and ends with you—from Adam and Eve to the last microbes that would roam this earth—it’s everybody. Many see love like that, you know?

“Alex…?”

“I finally found you,” he said, lifting Professor Hei from the rubble. This was the riskiest save yet. Just a few blocks down was the two Sungrazers, fighting with what little Slayers remained, including Archknell.

Professor Hei clutched onto Alexander, bloody and weak. “C-Cloutier…”

“I know,” he replied sadly, having been notified of Cloutier’s death earlier. “Let’s get you home first.”

Genuinely, I want to be closer to Mom and Dad, right the wrongs I’ve made back in Hangzhou, becoming the son they had always wanted. Being better than the man who stood here yesterday. Working for everything they strived for: charity, strength, kindness, love.

No decent person deserves to die. But the multiverse has other ideas, strangely hellbent on destroying this world. So, I think, there’s nothing wrong with fighting the stars themselves in order to keep it.

Because I know the pain of losing my home, and no one else should suffer the same.

“Hey Initiate!” Alexander called to her, a gray-haired woman with round-rimmed glasses, who just sent a couple soldiers away. One of Angels.

He gently placed Professor Hei on the ground. She was there when Pereyra performed the mass artillery strike originating from two areas: Gallery Street and here, where according to eyewitnesses, it was “out of a sinkhole filled with water”. As a result Hei had received various injuries and all of them were pretty serious.

And Cloutier… He clenched his teeth.

Initiate was ghost-pale, a given considering she was teleporting these casualties non-stop since she arrived. “Forty-one,” she said, voice strained, “Gul makes forty-one.”

“Is there a reason why you’re keeping count?” he asked, and took a [Healing Potion], lifted Hei’s head, and made her drink.

“To make sure the President gets it right when he gives you your medal.”

“Shut up.” After the potion was empty, he shakily stood, legs trembling. Just about everything hurt like the worst workout of his life.

Professor Hei gripped onto Alexander’s wrist, resisted when he made an attempt to leave. She shook her head.

“I have to get number forty-three, alright?” He tugged. She was so weak that he, an E-Rank, could break free with enough force. But he didn’t want to hurt her. “You did enough; you’ll be back with your girls.”

Her grip loosened enough for him to pull away, and he ventured into No Man’s Land again, where the Sungrazers were still tearing the city up. How long has it been since Alexander arrived? Long enough, honestly, because this started to feel like home.

He recognized the tipped-over hummer that had a sharp chunk of concrete smashed on the hood. Passed a small crater that had a destroyed magic turret inside. Turned the corner and found Mount Rubbish, made from a natural event called “collateral damage”. Metal framework claimed the peak, made a backwards P.

“Hey! Hey!” shouted a man from the left, a block down. A large armored Slayer, helmet broken, and his right arm was dangling uselessly. Someone small was hoisted over his shoulder.

Alexander hurried, and saw a familiar face. “Shit, Montana? Thought you were incap.”

Montana nodded, gestured to his useless arm. “Drank a potion. I thought you evac’d the fuck out, Shen.”

“Alba is, but I had to help somehow. Come on, I called a teleporter here.” Alexander tilted his head towards the courtyard, got them briskly jogging back. The ground shook occasionally, and a red bolt hit Mount Rubble.

On Montana’s shoulder was Problem. At some point he’d been rendered incapictated, Alexander honestly didn’t know when. Too much shit had happened.

“You know how the fight’s going?” asked Alexander on the way back.

“Both sides are dead tired,” Montana answered as Problem was jostled on his shoulder. “They’ve been fighting for fucking hours now. Ask me what the Comets got one thing going for ‘em? They’re tough. They don’t go down easy and that’s what’s killing us. That’s what—that’s what killed Hidden.”

“Yeah…” Alexander didn’t know what to say and continued on, leading Montana past the crater—

[EXPEDITION STATUS]

DECEASED: Jury

INCAPICTATED: Levin

Fate loved irony.

Before either man could speak, a building had turned into smoke about a block ahead, and they ducked into the closest backroad. A strangely-shaped alien appeared from the cloud. It had been platinum-colored, diced into pieces and connected together like a broken jigsaw puzzle, and now it was oil-black. Saved for the still-burning molten handprint at the center of its chest, scarred by Firebrand.

Tewfik.

A red bolt shot out, a metal-grinding impact rang, and something had skidded close to the men’s location. It was a black-haired man that was wrapped with thousands of threads; his left shoulder had been brutalized, and strings were weaving through his flesh like sutures.

Archknell.

The next alien came. Round like a disco ball of death, each plate possessing a thousand eyes and an endless chasm to go along with it. Like its partner, blood leaked from open cracks but not a single plate was completely broken.

Pereyra.

It reunited with Tewfik sputtering as it flew, like a dying drone. They faced Archknell who kneeled alone, hurt and bleeding, all three warriors having seen better days, but only one side had the upper hand.

Alexander gritted his teeth and verbally messaged Initiate through the System: “Evacuate now. The Sungrazers are here. Montana and Problem are coming to you now. Get them then yourself out. Do not wait for me.”

“What?” Montana overheard him.

Alexander nodded. “Go. Now. I’m about to do something stupid.”

For the millionth time.