Future Romaine's POV
"Donte! Nooo!" I screeched, begging him to stop before it was too late
Donte launched himself into the air, infusing his fist with lightning, then crashed down on Zero.
Vanta Zero was barely able to block it, clearly struggling to even do that much.
"YOU BASTARD!" Donte belted, assaulting Zero with a flurry of lightning-infused attacks
Vanta Zero couldn't keep up with Donte's speed, neither could the rest of us; we were all forced to watch as he beat the life out of Vanta Black Zero at near light speed.
"Should we um, stop them?" Jayden questioned
"Kirk, can you with draw him?" I asked
"His soul's resisting too much for my destiny chains to have any effect; every fiber of his being is hellbent on killing Zero." He answered
"So then all we can do is sit back and watch?" Samuel complained
"Might as well;" I replied, "if we try to get in their way we might be the ones that end up dead."
Zero finally got his footing in the fight, and began countering Donte's incoming attacks.
They both laid good hits on each other, throwing lightning all over the place.
Just when Donte convinced us all that he had the upper hand, Vanta Black Zero grabbed him by the face, then proceeded to drag him across the ground; all the while constantly infusing lightning into Donte's body.
"We need to help him!" Melany shouted
"Kirk!" I called out
"They're moving too fast for me to see!" he responded
Once Zero came to a stop, Donte's body was nothing more than a burnt husk.
Everyone was mortified at the image of Donte's entire back rubbed off, along with his face no longer having any flesh. Black Zero was now physically healed of all attacks that Donte had done to him.
"Black Zero!" Melany shouted, "You MONSTER!"
"Melany, don't make the same mistake as Donte." I advised
"I know I know."
Just then Zero ran up to her and pierced her chest with his hand.
"Melany!" I screamed out
I turned back to look at Kirk to question why he didn't pull her out of the way, but when I saw him he was kneeling on the ground.
"Kirk! What's wrong!" I called
"A clear drawback of his puppeteering." Vanta Zero commented, "If I slaughter your puppets then you feel the effects."
Kirk neither confirmed nor denied what Zero had said, though he now started to cough up blood.
"Kirk is that true?" I questioned, "If it is then why would you do this for us?"
"I told you," he coughed, "I'll protect you until my very last breath. I'm fine, just focus on the bastard that's killing everyone."
"Do you really think the three of you can defeat me?" Zero questioned
"Three of us?" Jayden questioned, looking around, "Don't you mean seven?"
In the blink of an eye Vanta Zero ran past us, by the time we turned around he was already behind Kirk and had slaughtered the Garrisons.
"I've had enough of your tinkering, pest."
Black Zero slid his hand clean through Kirk's chest, leaving him to bleed out and die on the ground.
"Kirk no!" I reactively shouted
"Damn we just keep dropping like flies." Sam commented
"Your time's expired Romaine." Zero spoke, charging towards me at superspeed
My body froze for a split second, preventing me from moving away. The bright lightning produced by Zero's trail blinded me for that same amount of time. I merely blinked to protect my eyes, and when I opened them I found myself kneeling on the ground. Sam was standing before me, shielding me from the attack.
"S-Sam-.." I stuttered, "w-why would you do that...for me?...Why me?"
"Because..." He muttered, coughing up blood, "you're the coordinate...you're the only one that can end all this Romaine... it has to be you that stops him."
I watched as Zero retracted his hand from Samuel's chest, dropping his dead body to the ground.
I looked up at Vanta Black Zero as he stood in front of me.
"Pitiful scum." he scoffed, "After all these years, it all ends with you kneeling at my feet."
Though I couldn't move, everything inside me was screaming to fight.
Zero slowly approached me as my mind screamed at me to fight. For a short moment I gave into the despair; all hope felt lost, there was nothing left that I could do.
Images of the grid flashed through my mind, I was both shocked and exhilarated by the feeling; I was again displaced from my body, and I found myself wandering the Realm of the Grid.
"Not again." I thought out loud
This time I was all alone, left to figure everything out for myself.
I glared at the doomsday clock and read the time.
"2 minutes to midnight."
Just then the words of the Prince echoed in my mind.
I'm the chosen one...the Grid chose me. There has to be a reason other than just watching all my friends die.
"I'm sorry." I muttered, "If you give me the power to beat this dude I swear I'll never give up again; I'm the Coordinate of Loyalty, and I'll fulfill my purpose."
The blue coordinate I was standing on lit up, seeming to be infusing me with some kind of energy.
I was transported back to my body, witnessing everything moving at speeds close to nothing, even Vanta Black Zero appeared to be frozen in place.
I slowly stood up, clenching my fist. It was infused with a new type of energy that I've never felt before. When I struck Zero in his chest with the attack, time went back to normal and he flew back countless miles.
"Woah!" went Jayden, "How did you do that?!"
Zero was clearly taken off-guard by what had just happened, yet still came in to attack.
He flashed towards me at light speed, though when his fist was an inch from my face, time froze again. I merely stepped to the side and punched him in the gut. Time immediately resumed again and Vanta Black Zero suffered the same thing.
He reattempted it a couple of times, though the results were the same; and after a while I started to get the hang of this whole "Time Freezing" ability.
"Arrogant Fool." He grunted, getting up and wiping blood off his face, "Let's see what you'll do once I break my Infinity Seal."
Vanta Black Zero started to run in a pattern resembling the infinity symbol; constantly absorbing and outputting his own electricity.
"The heck is an 'Infinity Seal'?" Jayden questioned
"Jayden, you need to get out of here now." I instructed, "Don't ask any questions, just leave; whatever he's planning I can handle it."
"But~"
"I said go!"
With a disappointed look on his face, Jayden abandoned the field and went back to HQ.
The storm clouds in the sky started raging even more than scientifically possible; the lightning was even damaging the buildings in the city itself.
Zero stood in the center of the symbol he'd now engraved into the ground. His body constantly gave off massive amounts of lightning.
"It's time we settled this." I told him
In the fraction of a millisecond, Vanta Black Zero dashed towards me. I attempted to counter by freezing time, though all it did was barely slow him down. He bashed his hand towards my head, but I quickly parried his attack and jumped backwards.
I scoffed, wondering why the timestop didn't affect him anymore. When he came at me I tried it again, though still nothing; he swung his fist sideways towards my head, which I barely managed to block. Numerous bolt of lightning were emitted from the point of impact between us, and I was thrown over to my left; though no sustained damage.
"Damnit." I grunted
"You think you're so smart." he mocked, slowly walking over, "That ability you used earlier on me won't work anymore; you can't stop infinity."
What he said rung in my mind, I knelt in place pondering everything.
-Mental Process-
If his speed was really infinite then the only way I would've been able to keep up with him so far is by also having infinite speed; and I'd like to place my bet on that being false. Which means the way his new form or technique works is that it gives him an indefinite variable of speed, not the same as infinite.
So my ability itself isn't stopping time, it's just temporarily decelerating the speeds of everything around me. Like on an asymptote on a graph, no value truly reaches 0, they just get so close to the 0 line that we perceive them as 0; in fact they're just infinitely decreasing values. If that's so, then that means his speed is now at a constant of an indefinite value, so I can't influence it with my Timestop...or can I?
-End of Mental Process-
I had a theory that needed to be tested out. I allowed Zero to come in for another attack, which I easily parried.
I charged a bolt of lightning and threw it towards him then used my Timestop. Even though Zero could still react in real time due to his indefinite speed, my bolt of lightning was now frozen in the air. I physically touched the lightning, confirming one of my several theories; by decelerating the atoms in the lightning bolt, I'd essentially changed its state from plasma to solid, allowing me to touch it as a physical object. Now waving around the lightning itself like a staff, I'll admit I got a bit carried away with how cool it was.
I should also point out that Zero seems a lot more aggressive than usual; usually he waits for you to come in for the attack, but now he's making all the attempts at hitting me. There's gotta be a reason for this.
Once again Vanta Black Zero charged towards me with his lightning splurging fist, though this time I blocked his attack with my lightning staff and counterattacked; the area my staff had hit was now visibly damaged and wasn't regenerating.
"Bingo." I thought to myself
Immediately I'd stopped maintaining my Timestop ability, my lightning staff dispelled into pure energy; which makes sense since I was only able to wield it because its atoms' speeds were decreased to that of a solid.
Black Zero was now wary of my lightning wielding, being that he seemingly couldn't heal from it. He cloaked his body in the rigid and powerful lightning that he'd had been outputting, and came back at me. I swiftly engaged my Timestop and manifested the Lightning Staff.
Every attack he'd throw at me I would just block with my staff and every attack I landed on him would be negated by his Lightning Cloak.
Now that we were on equal grounds, the fight itself was just getting started.