Chương 96: 95: Jumpers

Pyramid's suit activated. Shimmering armour unfolded across his body, sleek plates of alloy locking into place over Apis-infused circuitry. His mask sealed across his face, the collar rising as metallic feathers settled along his shoulders. A massive curved cutlass of polished brass materialised in his hand, its edge humming with barely restrained energy.

"Oooh…"

"So cool…" The girls stared in awe. Pyramid smiled. He moved. To everyone watching, he simply disappeared. Butter never looked his way. She remained occupied with Daniel's holograms, the Steppers and the chaos surrounding her. Perfect. Pyramid's cutlass swept through the air. SHNK. Her head separated cleanly from her shoulders. Blood fanned across the marble. Her body collapsed. Silence lasted only a heartbeat before the recreation wing erupted. Cheers thundered through the casino.

Applause echoed beneath the chandeliers. Cassa and Ninuy screamed, throwing their arms around one another.

"He did it!"

"Well... as expected."

"I didn't even see him move!"

"It was like he teleported!"

"He didn't even need Wormholes!"

"She was no match for a real Operative!" Pyramid stood over the body, crimson dripping from his blade. Slowly, he raised his arms. The applause only grew louder.

"Another enemy defeated," he declared, his voice carrying through the recreation wing.

"As I've always done... and as I'll always do." His Stepper bodyguard stepped beside him, a disruptor already in hand.

"The kangaroo," Pyramid ordered, casually gesturing toward Jump. The summon still thrashed beneath a dozen Steppers. Heavy chains strained around its limbs while continuous gunfire hammered its impossible body.

"Handle it." The bodyguard obeyed. The disruptor clamped onto Jump. Its modified Apis charge attacked body and concept simultaneously. The enormous kangaroo vibrated violently before collapsing into drifting fairy dust. A collective gasp swept through the room. It was over. The girl was dead. The monster was gone.

"Did you see that?" a trainee whispered.

"He let his Stepper use an advanced disruptor."

"That's... that's incredibly generous."

"Pyramid's always generous."

"He's the greatest Operative in the Nest."... Near the entrance, the boy with the scar through his eyebrow continued staring at Butter's body.

"…That's not right." The girl beside him slowly shook her head.

"She's dead. I watched it happen."

"…Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." At the centre of the recreation wing, Pyramid basked in the admiration, arms spread as though embracing the applause itself.

"You see?" he proclaimed.

"This is the fate of those who oppose the Syndicate. This is what becomes of those who-" Clap. A single pair of hands echoed through the room. Every head turned.

"Oh my." The voice was gentle.

"So strong." Pyramid paused. The crowd turned. At the edge of the room, a figure balanced atop a unicycle, wobbling ever so slightly as she rode in slow circles. She was juggling colourful gummy bears with intense concentration, her tongue poking from the corner of her mouth while a half-eaten sour strip dangled between her lips. White, curly hair spilled beneath a floppy rabbit-eared beanie. Alabaster skin. Black shimmering bandages. Pink eyes. Butter. Everyone instinctively gave her space.

The fallen body lying beside Pyramid shimmered... and quietly dissolved into drifting light. It had never existed. Just a mirage. An illusion woven so perfectly that nobody had questioned it. Butter caught another gummy bear.

"Oh my..." She nearly dropped the whole handful, quickly recovering with an awkward wobble of the unicycle.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

"I have to focus really hard on this." Another gummy bear bounced off her forehead. She caught it anyway.

"I'm not actually very good at riding unicycles." Silence swallowed the recreation wing. Someone whispered, "... She says'oh my' an awful lot." Another leaned closer.

"Someone hand her a dictionary. There are other expressions." A third shrugged.

"I don't know... it's kind of growing on me."... Pyramid stared. Cassa blinked. Ninuy slowly pointed between the disappearing corpse... and the very-much-alive girl balancing on one wheel.

"…What?" Butter finally looked up, smiling apologetically.

"I'm sorry." She popped another gummy bear into her mouth.

"Did I miss something?" Nobody answered. Even the Steppers looked confused. Behind Butter, something enormous drifted lazily into view. A gigantic octopus floated through the air as though gravity had forgotten it existed. Long lashes framed impossibly large eyes while its skin rippled through shimmering blues, golds and violets like living oil on water. Massive tentacles swayed gently behind it, each lined with enormous suction cups that seemed to drink the light around them. Tentacles. The crowd gasped.

"That thing cast an illusion?"

"She's got an entire zoo of magical creatures!"

"Why an octopus with eyelashes, though?"

"She's weird." Steppers opened fire. A storm of bullets, blades and conceptual attacks converged on Butter and the floating octopus in the same instant. Both dissolved into shimmering light. Silence. A scientist near the back of the crowd sighed.

"…Well, that explains it." His body rippled. White curls spilled from beneath a floppy rabbit-eared beanie as pink eyes replaced his own. Black shimmering bandages flowed across alabaster skin. Butter struck a little pose, one foot behind the other as she flashed a tiny peace sign beside her face. She smiled sheepishly.

"Ta-da." The scientist was gone. People screamed.

"That's not-""She was the scientist!"

"She's been in the crowd this whole time!"

"She was watching us!"

"She could be anybody!" Butter simply walked toward Pyramid.

"Fermata." The Steppers slowed at once. The concept of suspension settled over them, dragging at every movement. They pushed forward as though submerged beneath an ocean, bullets crawling through the air, swords inching forward, missiles hanging almost motionless. A nearby scientist frowned.

"... Did she just say Fermata?" A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"The music symbol?" another operative asked.

"The one that means to hold a note?" A woman in a crimson gown squinted at the frozen volley. Another Stepper strained against the invisible weight, his armour whining in protest. Butter kept walking, utterly unconcerned, weaving between bullets that scarcely moved at all. Pyramid laughed.

"You think that'll save you?" His blade flashed. Dozens of layered projectiles erupted from its edge, overlapping trajectories designed to leave no avenue of escape as they tore toward Butter.

"Sforzando." A translucent golden shield blossomed around her. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The projectiles shattered harmlessly against it, scattering like rain against glass. Butter kept walking. Her expression never changed. The barrage was only a distraction. Hidden behind it, Pyramid's visor had already finished its work. Target locked. His HUD quietly fixed itself to Butter's coordinates. His fingers opened, revealing a handful of Jumpers - grey-and-cobalt spiked spheres no larger than beans.

They looked unimpressive. They were anything but. Once a target was locked, a Jumper simply... appeared inside it. No warning. No trajectory. Each carried a compressed concussive charge that unfolded a heartbeat after teleportation, blasting razor-sharp spikes through flesh, bone and organs, obliterating a victim from the inside out. Their payloads were modular. Poisons, explosives, corrosives, parasites - whatever fit inside could be delivered directly into the body. Pyramid preferred acid. Living acid.

It searched for tissue. Fed on it. Spread through it. Cell by cell. That wasn't what made Jumpers infamous. They were effectively banned from mass production because they ignored almost every conventional defence. Technology couldn't track them. Magical senses couldn't predict them. Even conceptual perception struggled to acknowledge their existence before they had already arrived. His mother had secured him a small personal supply. He smiled. Time to spend them. The Jumpers disappeared from his hand.

They appeared inside Butter's brain. Her heart. Her marrow. Both knees. Butter faltered. KOOM. KOOM. KOOM. KOOM. The explosions ripped through empty air. Blood and scraps of tissue hung suspended for a heartbeat as space folded where her body had been. Hundreds of steel spikes erupted outward like a blooming minefield. Nearby Steppers instinctively knocked them away from the Operatives they protected, while a few simply caught the fragments in armoured hands before they could strike anyone.

Butter reappeared several metres away with one hand beneath her nose. Blood trickled between her fingers. She wiped it away.

"Oh my..." Her eyes drifted from the crimson on her fingertips back to Pyramid.

"That was an insane trick." A faint smile crossed her face.

"If those detonated any faster... and if my teleportation were any less selective..." She let out a slow breath.

"... I might've died." Her gaze dropped to the marble floor. The droplets of living acid were already moving, burrowing through the stone like starving termites, branching into tiny veins as they searched for flesh. Several seconds passed before they slowed... and stopped. Butter studied the blackened marble in thoughtful silence. She had only survived because she'd felt the Jumpers physically unfolding inside her. They hadn't flown toward her. They hadn't emitted intent.

They hadn't even existed outside her body first. One instant they were in Pyramid's hand. The next they were embedded inside her brain, heart, marrow and knees. There had been nothing to sense beforehand. Only the faint physical sensation of their mechanisms unfolding after they had already appeared. That was their only flaw. A single millisecond. For almost anyone alive, it may as well have been no delay at all. Butter experienced time on an entirely different scale.

The instant she felt those tiny devices expanding inside her body, she'd Moth-Stepped away with surgical precision, leaving every Jumper behind before the detonations caught up. Had they exploded immediately upon arrival, or had her teleportation been even slightly less selective, there would've been nothing left of her to regenerate. She looked back at Pyramid, genuine admiration flickering across her face.

"Would've." Behind his mask, Pyramid let out a quiet chuckle, carefully concealing the panic beginning to claw at his stomach.

"You still will." Pyramid lunged. Butter skipped aside, Melody humming through her body. Her form vibrated at a frequency that ignored the boundary between matter and matter. She reached into him. Her hand passed cleanly through the Magpie suit as though it were a ghost, closed around his face, and flung him across the recreation wing. THOOOOOM. Pyramid bounced across polished marble before skidding to a stop. His armour kept going.

The empty suit sprinted another several metres before smashing into the far wall with a metallic CRRAAANG, limbs still moving as though its owner remained inside. Silence settled over the casino. Pyramid slowly pushed himself upright. He was wearing nothing except his black underwear. Butter gasped. A blush spread across her cheeks.

"Oh my..." She covered her mouth.

"I-I didn't mean to vibrate you out of your clothes. Only your Magpie suit." She looked genuinely horrified.

"I'm so sorry. I can look away if..." FWIP. A silver pellet screamed toward her temple. Her prosthetic leg snapped upward. TING. The pellet ricocheted away, only to curve sharply and whip back for another pass. The slightest mistake would've punched straight through her skull. Healing wasn't the frightening part. Daniel's pellets softened reality itself. Flesh, armour, conceptual barriers, even physics - none of it mattered.

They erased resistance so completely that the projectile behaved as though nothing in existence could slow it. Relative to whatever it encountered, it effectively appeared instantly. A speedster-killer. Dodging one outright bordered on impossible. Only two things had saved her. Daniel couldn't fire them recklessly. Every shot demanded careful calibration, trajectory calculations, and perfect timing. Music danced across her skin before each trigger pull.

Violins, brass, and percussion swept through her nervous system like an orchestra rehearsing violence before it happened. Butter sighed.

"Perpendosi." The projectile's shadow peeled away from the marble floor like liquid, rising to swallow the pellet whole. It disappeared without a sound. The shadow rippled once...... and settled back onto the floor as though nothing had happened. Nobody reacted. Nobody had even seen it. Following one of Daniel's silver pellets was a challenge by itself. By the time anyone's eyes caught up, the attack was already over. To every spectator, it simply looked as though the projectile had inexplicably ceased to exist....

Daniel landed lightly nearby.

"I was wondering when you'd get back," Butter sighed. The Aria opened. A page turned. A deafening screech shook the chandeliers. SKRAAAAAAA! A griffin of molten gold and twilight burst into existence, wings spanning nearly fifteen metres as they blasted the room with hurricane-force winds, scattering shimmering feathers through the casino. Sway. Unlike Jump, Sway had been born from a single impossible instruction. Swag: Immeasurable. Butter had written it at fifteen because she thought it sounded funny.

The Aria hadn't. Sway had no fixed power. It simply did whatever looked coolest, its abilities escalating to match the moment. If tearing space apart had more style than flying around it, space lost. If outrunning causality made for a better entrance, causality waited its turn. Sway refused to look uncool. The griffin crossed the distance before the concept of distance had time to exist between them. Daniel's eyes widened. A wormhole blossomed beneath him. Sway ignored it.

Its talons ripped through the portal's geometry, shredding the spatial fold apart before seizing Daniel around the torso. THOOOOOOOOOM. The Operative became a living cannonball. He tore through a cluster of Steppers, bodies scattering across polished marble as tables exploded into splinters and chairs cartwheeled through the air. Butter gave the room a cheerful salute.

"Good luck!" Her reserves had climbed back to fifty percent. She hadn't truly started spending them yet. Katherine's loophole had changed everything. Crescendo no longer amplified only physical force. Fed with enough Gloom, it multiplied Butter's magic itself. The drawback was severe. Crescendo remained occupied constantly, leaving her unable to store overwhelming bursts of physical power.

Maintaining the effect also demanded absolute concentration while flooding her nervous system with amplified magical information. Melody already pushed her senses beyond human comprehension. Adding Crescendo on top of it felt like sprinting at full speed while solving advanced mathematics, reciting the alphabet backwards, controlling every heartbeat individually, and conducting an orchestra - all without making a single mistake.

Excess Gloom continuously repaired the microscopic damage spreading through her nerves, though nervous tissue remained frustratingly delicate. Precision healing always demanded far more concentration than muscle or bone. The strain was immense. Worth it. As long as Butter kept her focus...... she could flood the battlefield with summons and unleash abilities almost without pause. — The chaos slowly settled. People blinked, looking around as though waking from a dream. Some rubbed their eyes.

Others quietly righted overturned chairs. Melody's influence still lingered over the recreation wing. The concept of panic remained fractured, leaving hearts that should've been racing strangely calm, curiosity settling where fear ought to have been. Butter dusted off her hands.

"First..." She smiled sheepishly.

"Thank you for not suiting up." Her gaze drifted across the Operatives still lounging in tailored jackets, dresses and waistcoats instead of Magpie armour. She frowned slightly, as though only just realising how unusual that was.

"I appreciate it." Several exchanged amused glances. Butter blinked. Almost imperceptibly, strands of Gloom drifted through the room. They carried no compulsion, only the faintest nudge, softening suspicion and making people just a little more willing to listen than they otherwise might have been. Curiosity quietly outweighed hostility. One man shrugged.

"Well... you didn't exactly seem hostile." Another woman lifted her wine glass.

"We were enjoying the show." A third Operative leaned against the bar.

"So..." he asked, "what do you actually want?" Butter scratched her cheek beneath the floppy bunny ears.

"I don't want to destroy your home." The room quietened.

"I don't want to destroy your way of life either." She gestured around the lavish recreation wing.

"I want to stop the kidnappings. The murders. Innocent people disappearing into pods. I want to stop the Syndicate controlling so much of the world from the shadows." A man near the poker tables folded his arms.

"And replace us with governments?" he asked.

"Would you rather politicians ran everything?" Butter winced.

"... Eugh." She rocked her hand from side to side.

"I don't think it has to be getting shot in the foot or getting shot in the hand." A few people blinked.

"We could... just try not getting shot at all." A ripple of laughter spread through the room.

"I know. Revolutionary idea." She smiled.

"Elect good leaders. Keep them accountable. The Sin War already wiped out most organised crime anyway. People deserve to live freely." A scientist adjusted his spectacles.

"People did disgusting things when they were free." Butter threw both hands into the air.

"Hey! I don't claim to be an omnipotent know-it-all, okay?" Several Operatives laughed.

"I mean... as free as people can be without hurting everyone else. If they do horrible things, punish them." She shrugged.

"There'll always be flaws. There always have been." Her smile softened.

"But anything's better than this." She looked toward the scientists.

"You people are brilliant. You're smart enough to invent something that doesn't rely on Apis." Her gaze shifted to the engineers.

"And clever enough to make ridiculous amounts of money without organised crime." Silence lingered. Butter clasped her hands behind her back.

"I'm not here to negotiate." She smiled apologetically.

"I'm stopping it either way." She gestured toward the doorway.

"You can keep enjoying your party. If you hear loud explosions..." She pointed at herself.

"... I'm probably arguing with people who strongly disagree." A few people snorted.

"And please don't misbehave." Her tone remained gentle.

"I could consume this entire Nest with one attack." Nobody laughed.

"I'm choosing not to." Her pink eyes swept across the room.

"So... please don't push me to the point where I no longer have a choice." Silence. After a long moment, Butter smiled again.

"... Thanks." She rubbed the back of her neck.

"You guys are low-key really chill." One Operative raised his glass.

"Much appreciated." Another nodded. The bartender gave her a thumbs-up.

"Try not to wreck the bar."

"I'll do my best," Butter promised. She disappeared. Sway remained behind. The griffin looked around the room, puffed out its chest, and immediately clotheslined a Stepper trying to sneak after Butter. BLAM. Another attempted to teleport. Sway folded its wings, struck a dramatic pose, and headbutted him through a roulette table. KRAAAASH. A third fired. The griffin caught the bullet in its beak, winked at the horrified crowd, spat it back into the rifle's barrel, and watched the weapon explode. BOOM.

The casino erupted into laughter, groans and scattered applause as Steppers continued discovering, one by one...... that Sway had absolutely no intention of behaving. — Near the entrance, Liora - the girl with the high ponytail and chipped black nail polish - finally broke the silence.

"She's not dead. That was never her." Beside her, Gideon, the broad-shouldered trainee with the scar through his eyebrow, stared at the hole in the ceiling.

"She pulled that octopus out of thin air. The book. The griffin..." Liora whispered.

"Who is she?" A bespectacled scientist, Dr. Halden, rubbed a hand across his face, unable to tear his eyes from the destruction.

"Thornburgh had her head."

"Thornburgh had a head," Halden corrected quietly.

"It had her face, but... that doesn't necessarily mean..." Someone behind them muttered, "I'm hungry now." Liora blinked.

"What?" The speaker - a chubby trainee named Milo - scratched the back of his neck.

"She smelled like sugar and cookies. She melted like candy." He frowned thoughtfully.

"I want a pastry." Liora slowly shook her head, her eyes lingering on the path Butter had taken.

"We need to warn everyone. That girl's still out there." Gideon glanced at her.

"Seriously? She'll be stopped regardless."

"She's strong," another trainee, Rhett, admitted, "but an Abomination or a Talon would make easy work of her." Gideon looked up at the shattered ceiling before letting his gaze drift across the ruined casino. His face had gone pale.

"If she survived Thornburgh..." he said quietly, "and she just humiliated Pyramid in front of the entire recreation wing..." He swallowed. A lanky trainee nearby suddenly clasped his hands together, shut his eyes and tilted his face toward the ceiling.

"Thank you," Noel whispered reverently. Everyone looked at him.

"For what?" Rhett asked.

"For humiliating Pyramid." Noel sniffed dramatically.

"She's healing the Nest." Several trainees burst into laughter.

"Bro's praying to the enemy."

"She did what none of us could."

"I've waited years for someone to embarrass that guy." Liora covered a smile before forcing herself to look serious again.

"You're all terrible."

"We know," Noel replied without the slightest hint of shame. Her smile faded as she looked back toward the corridor Butter had disappeared into.

"I don't think sending Steppers is going to stop her."

"Yeah..." she murmured.

"I don't think so either." Her expression turned solemn.

"That's why we have Abominations."