"What's happening?" Zack questioned the group. He'd discovered the secret telepathy channel too late, and before he could figure out a way to barge in, Pinky broke out and now forced her pinkish, horrible reality onto the world. "C'mon... ain't I part of the team now? Which implies no more secrets," he insisted—his will forcing the idea into everyone's mind.
"Remember the 'sire, m'lord' thing with Solgrave?" Psycho asked, shrugging off the weak attempt.
"Classic training regimen, yeah!" said Zack.
"This is the same. One of us keeps putting up barriers, and your job is to break in, using our Sub-Space within your core," said Psycho, covertly getting approval from others. "We are at the stage where we can train with Solgrave. You aren't. So this should get you up to speed."
"Our level," DJ smirked.
"Of control," Bazuka added, contemptuously eyeing DJ. "His Sub-Space trumps ours tenfold. And don't get me started on those ridiculous artifacts."
"Hey—hey-hey! Control over power is how we've won so far," DJ rapped. "Don't put yourself down, because when we fight together as a family, we win—win-win by putting others ten-feet down—down-down!"
Bazuka suppressed her emotion, turning away.
Lux, shocked by her display, turned to DJ and nodded in approval. "You've gotten stronger."
"It's all about control—control-control, u'fool," DJ winked.
Zack was out of the loop until he tapped into Bazuka's Sub-Space and understood she had the highest proficiency when it came to controlling one's emotions. At the same time, DJ Rizz mastered swaying emotions—two central powers of their team, essential for both attack and defense.
"Ready?" Lux asked Zack.
"Weird question to ask a Broken Soul," Zack chuckled.
The joke didn't land right away, and the group dove into their core as one to ponder for an epiphany.
For any mortal, this automated response would've drawn either a quick chuckle or a confused stare. Yet in the fractured society of the Soul-Realm—where every motion is deliberate and every silence calculated—no thought passes without being weighed a thousand times over.
Of course, all of this happens in the blink of an eye, appearing instantaneous to mortal eyes.
But for another Broken Soul, that exact moment stretches tenfold. Long enough to feel the weight of every choice, and the echo of every hesitation.
"You should really let that 'decade' thing go," Lux said, chuckling. "Making a simple decision takes forever if the fate of the world rests upon said simple decision."
"Didn't the boss rewind time before he left?" Psycho told Zack in the form of a question. "The people you want to impress are back to their teenage selves, so stop worrying so much."
"Couldn't care -- less!" Zack lied; his lie was apparent by the twisting walls—his twisting gutt, an enforcement of his will. "Too bad none of us can manipulate time, though." He controlled his feelings, letting Pinky's pinkish effect take over.
"Why?" Psycho said, disgusted. "If it worked on other broken souls, then it might be of some use. Controlling these pathetic nobodies is pointless." He said, frowning at some thugs, immediately making them furious.
Lux chuckled nervously, snatching up the memories with a swipe of his hands. And as Pinky passed by, her pinkish aura made the hefty yet muscular men in black giggle like teenage girls.
Zack's stomach churned at the sight, yet he held back the barf, thanks to the absence of a stomach. "Isn't that against the law? The Soul King's one."
"Loopholes," Lux said, casually erasing everyone's memories in the street as they returned to their mundane lives. "A little time magic if needed."
"Repairs," Bazuka said, snapping her fingers and fixing the twisted walls.
"But you didn't use any time magic," Zack said, pointing at Lux. "You just erased their memories."
"Soul-Rule Seven: Mortal interactions with the divine are reduced to supernatural incidents, myths, etc—anything that they can't prove or remember," Lux said.
"Soul King is one scary guy," Zack said, shivering.
The climate around the group turned grimmer as Pinky's mood shifted. "No recognition, no thanks, nothing," she said with gritted teeth.
DJ's inaudible hum turned into a soft lullaby, softening Pinky's mood and turning the weather back to its typical, mortal-ish kind. "Is this right?" He asked Zack.
Zack looked around; though the mortals knew something was wrong with the group, unless they focused their entire being on them, they couldn't tell the difference. Even if some exceptional individuals stood among the crowd, as soon as their concentration waned, so did their memory. "No!" He shook his head. "But there isn't anyone who can bypass the Soul King's law, so—" He abruptly stopped, his eyes zooming onto a girl in rags.
"That's one weird way to end a sentence," said Psycho.
"Weird is all we are and what we do," Zack taunted back. "And I stopped because... well, because..." He pointed at the crowd, unable to remember why.
"Why did I stop mid-sentence?" He questioned himself.
"Found someone?" Bazuka looked into the crowd. "Brat has one heck of a mind." She smiled at the girl staring straight into her eyes—no, staring straight into her soul. "Who the fuck is she?"
"What are you both on about?" Lux demanded an explanation. "What girl?"
Barbie turned away, now looking at Lux—baffled. "What girl?" she asked, genuinely confused.
Lux wanted to yell back, but instead, he dropped a tiny green orb before dragging the group into the sixth layer of reality.
The orb cracked on impact, bathing Earth in a green light and forcing it to rotate in the opposite direction. Time on Earth rewound alongside the Earth's opposite rotation, causing the planet to break away from its usual orbital motion and triggering the seventh rule; An invisible pulse forced the universe to stop and backtrack its expansion to a mortal hour.
"Follow and find souls weaker than ours," Lux warned Zack. "Not anyone equal or stronger."
The group looked at Lux with concern, their memories of the girl already erased.
"What happened?" Zack asked. "What did you do? Please tell me you didn't use up Solgrave's power orb to reverse time."
"I had to!" Lux shot back, reemerging a hundred miles away from their previous location. "That—" He tried to recall, but as soon as he stopped thinking, the memory faded away. "Someone stronger found us. Be happy it's not hunting us, whatever it is!"
"So we are down one power orb and not sure why." Psycho broke into mad laughter. "Welcome to the group, boy." He patted Zack on the back. "You should've honored your birth parents' wishes."
"I am—" Zack said, clenching his fist and folding space around them. "—Take that back."
"Both of you, stop," Lux ordered. "Were you tracking that thing?"
"No!" Zack yelled. "I was following the energy discrepancy of a lower level. I'm not dumb enough, nor talented enough to track a soul similar to my level, let alone a level higher than mine."
"Emotions off," Bazuka reminded the group.
"Coincidence," Pinky assured the group, before her face contracted, displaying utter disbelief. "What's coincidental?" she asked.
"Great." Bazuka rolled her eyes to the back of her head in anger. "The only one among us who remembered and figured out the incident decided to erase her memory."
Zack ignores Bazuka's inhumane eye-roll and asks about Pinky instead. "Why does she keep doing that?"
"To break off the karmic connections."
"Oh, right! Her Slot makes her an easy target for tracking." Zack's clone in his core realized and passed on the information.
"You're developing fast, kid; being in two places at once." Lux sent positive energy towards Zack, unintentionally buffing his pride.
Before the positive vibes within the orange hue reached Zack, a purple, more sinister hue enveloped Zack, canceling out the positive effects. "We are being hunted, or have your pea-sized brains finally given out?"
"Relax." Pinky tackled Psycho, instantly dominating his negative field. "If we were, we would be running by now."
"This is the first." Bazuka mused. "Have we ever been left alone after a single jump?" She checked her watch. "And we jumped to the usual one hour, too."
"Time spells don't work on us—Broken Souls, I mean?" Zack asked, raising his hand.
"Haven't you been paying attention in these fifteen years?" Psycho roared into Zack's ear, almost bursting his eardrums. "Sani defines power; there's nothing that can impede us but ourselves."
"I was blocked from the information," Zack said in his defense—carefully omitting the part where he'd forgotten to store the data manually in his memory bank, losing it forever.
"Then why use such magic against an adversary like that?" his clone in the core asked, scanning the surroundings. In an instant, it realized they were deserted. "Oh," the clone muttered. "So no one gets caught in the crossfire. Can't believe everyone's that afraid of the Soul King."
"We!" Psycho gestured around. "Who fancy themselves 'gods' still call them 'laws' for a reason."
"Yup! Got that," Zack said in a somber tone; this time recording and saving the memory.
"What's wrong?" Pinky asked.
"Clone me in my core is smarter than me-me out here," Zack said.
"You're so lucky!" Pinky said, ruffling Zack's hair. "There are so few who can follow that weird-ass sentence. Also, don't think of them as two entities, because for one, with Sani, you can split into two separate beings, and two... What was two?" She looked at Bazuka, her memory erased eons ago.
"Both of them are you, just think of it as having your mind split between two topics."
"That's assuring." Zack's mood brightened, his skin glowing at the revelation.
"He rewrote his core again, didn't he!?" Bazuka sighed.
"Sure did." Lux comforted Barbie, hiding away her bazooka for what might follow. "It's also reasons like you—" He stepped between Barbie and Zack. "—that we are hunted."
Gods don't interfere in mortal matters, be it a flood or sacrilege. In a similar sense, higher-tier Souls don't have to bother with lower-tier Souls, as their actions are inconsequential in every sense of the word; the only instance for a Broken-Soul to interfere with anyone lower resides within their reason for having become broken, thus churning the cycle of the hunt and being hunted.
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Twenty-three. ———<>||<>———