Chapter 187: The Bumblebee's Defiance
The chamber was a temple to observation, built for an audience . It was a perfect, soundproofed cube of matte-black alloy, devoid of any feature save for a single raised stage and, before it, a vast semicircle of empty, plush velvet chairs.
On this screen, the battle between Moon and Kai unfolded with a clarity that made the feeds on Dr. Voss's ship look like ancient cave paintings. Every particle of vaporized rock, every ripple of distorted space, every flicker of crimson and gold in Moon's feral eyes was rendered in impossible, hyper-realistic detail. It was less a broadcast and more a window directly into the heart of the cosmic storm.
On the stage, silhouetted against this stellar carnage, was a man and a drum set. He was dressed in effortless, utilitarian black—a tank top, loose-fit cargo jeans, and scuffed boots. A weathered cowboy hat was pulled low, shadowing the upper half of his face. In his hand was a bottle of rich, amber craft beer.
But he wasn't drinking it.
With a slow, deliberate motion, Rivan uncapped the bottle. Instead of bringing it to his lips, he tilted it sideways, pouring the effervescent liquid not into a glass, but directly onto the taut, silvery surface of his snare drum. The beer pooled and shimmered, catching the light from the cosmic battle behind him, looking like a miniature galaxy had formed upon his instrument.
And then, he began to play.
The moment his drumsticks struck the beer-covered drumhead, something magical happened. The liquid did not splatter. It atomized. Each strike sent a cascade of microscopic beer particles flying into the air, where they hung, suspended, catching the light from the screen in a million different ways. With every beat, fill, and crash, he wasn't just creating sound; he was creating art. The air around his drum set became a living, breathing nebula of golden light, a shimmering, three-dimensional canvas that pulsed and danced in perfect, beautiful synchrony with the cataclysmic battle unfolding on the screen. The violent, planet-shattering kicks were accompanied by explosive supernovae of this golden mist; the frantic, high-speed rolls became swirling galaxies of light.
After a particularly thunderous fill that coincided with Moon being hurled through the gas giant, he let the sticks rest. The golden nebula slowly began to settle, the particles drifting down like benevolent stardust. The sudden silence in the room was as profound as the noise that had preceded it. He lifted his head, the light from the screen finally illuminating the lower part of his face—a sharp jawline and a mouth quirked in a faint, knowing smile. His gaze shifted from the settling golden mist to the front row of empty chairs.
Except, two of the chairs were no longer empty.
Ken and Shi Xiao sat there, their postures perfectly still, their presence so seamlessly integrated into the environment that it was impossible to tell when they had arrived. A few lingering particles of the golden beer-mist drifted around them, catching in their hair and on their shoulders like cosmic dust.
Rivan's smile widened. He placed his drumsticks down with a soft click.
"Shi. Ken," his voice was a calm, warm baritone, cutting through the lingering silence. "Do you know what my favorite insect is?"
The two exchanged a glance, a micro-expression of confusion passing between them. Such a mundane question, here, in this room, amidst the settling evidence of his beautiful alchemy, felt like the most profound of riddles.
Ken, ever the pragmatist, ventured a guess. "Given your nature, Master... perhaps the dragonfly? For its precision and predatory grace. Or the beetle, for its armored resilience. The ant, for its collective strength. Or the praying mantis, for its patience and lethal efficiency."
Rivan let out a soft, genuine laugh, a rich sound that seemed to make the last of the golden particles tremble in the air. "No. Nothing so... logically perfect." He gestured with his chin towards the screen, where Moon was now launching himself from the rings of the gas giant. "My favorite insect is the bumblebee."
Shi and Ken turned their attention fully to him, their confusion now plain. "We are... very interested to know why, Master," Shi said, her voice like chimes in the stillness.
Rivan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes gleaming with philosophical fire. "You see, the bumblebee is an aeronautical catastrophe. By all the known laws of physics, it should not be able to fly. Its body is too big, too heavy, too chunky. Its wings are too small, seemingly pathetically inadequate for the task of lifting that bulky thorax. When scientists first studied it, they were baffled. Some even declared it a living paradox, a creature that defied the very principles of aerodynamics."
He paused, letting the image of the struggling, humming bee form in their minds.
"They were wrong, of course. It doesn't break the laws; it uses different, more complex ones. It doesn't fly like a bird or a plane; it flies like a bumblebee. But that's not why I love it. I don't love it because science eventually found an explanation. I love it for that initial, glorious defiance. I love it because it flies in spite of its disadvantages. It doesn't care for the laws as we have written them. It has its own purpose, its own will, and it takes to the air regardless."
His gaze returned to the screen, to the two brothers who were tearing a solar system apart.
"They are like that," Rivan whispered, his voice filled with a strange mix of reverence and amusement. "Look at them. The beast is fighting with a borrowed, unstable form, a mind lost to primal instinct, against a parasite that has fused with one of the most powerful young Hunters I have ever seen. The odds are stacked against them in a dozen different ways. They are, by all logical accounts, aeronautical catastrophes."
He stood up, walking to the edge of the stage, his shadow stretching across the empty chairs, the last glimmers of the golden beer-mist still fading around him like dying stars.
"But they are not just performing well. They are not just doing better. They are performing at their absolute best. Their greatest heights of power, their most devastating attacks, their most profound displays of will... are all being forged precisely because of the overwhelming disadvantages they face. The bumblebee doesn't fly well when the wind is calm; it flies best when the storm tries to ground it. And these two... they are not just weathering their storm. They are conducting it."
He turned back to Ken and Shi, his expression serene.
"That is the beauty I see. Not the destruction, not the power for its own sake... but the magnificent, defiant flight against the impossible."
-----
Back on the spaceship, the mood was a thick soup of tension and horror. Lisa, her knuckles white as she gripped the console, finally voiced the question gnawing at everyone's mind.
"Dr. Voss... if this is what Hunters are capable of... is any civilization truly safe from them?"
Dr. Voss didn't turn from the screen, his eyes fixed on the devastation. "The answer is yes, but only because of extreme measures. Look at this. Moon and Kai can fight this violently in the 'real world' precisely because this is private property. There is no civilization here, no innocent lives to be lost. That is the only reason the Yaksha Police haven't already intervened."
He finally glanced at her, his expression grim. "But in densely populated centers like Nova Lumina or Elora City? The security is unimaginably tight. From the outside, the Yaksha Police. From the inside, government-sanctioned Hunters. And if any Hunter, regardless of their rank or reason, causes a problem there... they are executed on the spot. No court, no trial, no justification. It is the only way to maintain order."
"Oh, I see..." Lisa murmured, the brutal practicality of it settling like a stone in her stomach.
"And isolating Hunters isn't an option either," Voss continued, turning back to the screen. "Doing so would leave human civilization dangerously weak compared to the other races in the cosmos. We need our monsters to protect us from the monsters out there."
Their attention was pulled back to the main viewer. The battle, which had raged across the solar system, had somehow returned to the scarred surface of Thal'Ryn. The sight was a painful contrast to the cosmic-scale destruction of moments before.
Moon's transformed state had shattered. He lay crumpled on the bluish clay, his body a broken, bloody mess, his purplish-black skin fading back to his real skin colour, scarred flesh. Beside him, Kuro had reverted to his small, cub form, equally battered and unconscious, letting out tiny, pained whimpers with each shallow breath.
Standing over them was the possessed Kai. A triumphant, cruel smile was plastered on his face. He had even found a piece of splintered wood from the destroyed violet forests and was casually chewing on it, the picture of arrogant victory.
"Even though you were so powerful," the Crown's voice echoed, "at the end, because of your low endurance, you lose. And the Red Diamond Crown—the great me—is still standing. Without any mark on my body."
It was the ultimate boast. After a battle that had shattered planets, the host body was pristine, healed by the Crown's vile Blood Authority.
But then, something impossible happened.
Kai's other hand—the one not holding the piece of wood—jerked violently. It was a spastic, unnatural movement. Before the Crown could even process it, the hand clenched into a fist and, with all the force the battered body could muster, slammed directly into its own head.
THUD.
The impact was sickeningly solid. The triumphant smile on Kai's face vanished, replaced by a flicker of shock and confusion—not from the Crown, but from the sliver of Kai's own consciousness that had, for a single, desperate moment, broken through.
The message was clear, a silent scream from within the prison of his own mind:
I'm still in here. And I'm not giving up.
To be continued…