Depending on the barrier you enter after declaring your participation, you might end up stranded like Ace or you might not. Ace wound up in the east-city colony they didn't ambush during the raid some months ago. June Wilder and Kima Myers on the other hand entered from the west-city barrier. After crossing through the barrier draped over Retly, they bore witness to the Killing Game's uncontrollable chaos.
Everyone sprinted alongside each other, Eternal Sight's markings spread over June's emerald pupils. She glanced over her shoulder, watching from her peripheral as Kima clasped her hands together. From right beside her, not only did her trusty werewolf incarnate from the shadows, but she withdrew a bo-staff from the shadow portal hovering next to her head. The two comrades simultaneously nodded, leaving June to throw her hand into the air, and fire-blackened tendrils from her fingertips.
The threads entangled an overhead lamp post which Wilder swung on after using Covergence's Orderly Thunder to launch from the ground. Just as she was soaring toward the lamp post, her eyes widened and she suddenly vanished from the sky. The blast that'd been shot toward her face destroyed an abandoned building's unstable wall, loosening the debris from the structure so it could crush the participants sprinting below.
The shooter stood atop a rooftop, reloading a sniper rifle and standing upright. His green eye pierced through space, firing condensed heat toward June as she sprinted across the platform toward him. Luckily, her head weaved away from the beam's trajectory. It seemed she would be able to catch him easily after all—that was what she assumed. Just as her hands were about to grasp the shooter's trench coat collar, her throat was squeezed by his metal hand and she was slammed against the rooftop.
'So… strong..!'
She coughed up blood into his face as the platform below the both of them began crackling. The two fighters hadn't realized the roof they were battling off wasn't even a rooftop, to begin with—it was a skylight. Their bodies suddenly fell through the shattered glass, glancing at one another in mid-air but momentarily before they splashed into a pool. June quickly processed her new environment and started swimming toward the surface, clasping onto the poolside once emerging. Knocking out the water sunken in her ears, she groaned and then started rubbing her eyes.
Then, she was kicked in the gut and sent rolling across the poolside floor. The shooter stomped across the wet ground, pulling back June's head by her white hair—preparing to smash her face in. Gripping her hair within his metal hand, he turned around while crouched against his knee. Descending from the open skylight was none other than the Wilder sister's black-haired partner.
"Go, Kon!" Kima yelled.
The werewolf falling beside her splashed onto the pool, swiftly jumping across the water and then sinking its teeth into the shooter's exposed neck. Without any way to retaliate, he fell to the ground, leaking blood from his torn throat.
June pushed herself up, holding her bloodied head. Her friend's hand extended into her field of view, leading the white-haired girl to direct her green pupils upward. She didn't hesitate—instead, she took a moment to gaze into her ally's purple orbs. But, even if she searched within those eyes for all of eternity, she was sure to find no remorse within Kima's soul. So, she took Kim's hand and pulled herself upright.
Rubbing her neck with a momentary moan, June glanced at the shooter's corpse and then her friend beside her. "You didn't have to kill him," she said.
Kim carefully stroked her canine's fur as it stood idle by her leg. "I did. Then again, I guess that was a waste of points…" she muttered.
Then, she shrugged. Her purple eyes momentarily scanned the area, quickly locating the pool's exit. Kima walked past June, bumping her shoulder and watching as the white-haired girl met her gaze.
"C'mon. We gotta keep moving."
She turned to the exit, fully prepared to start fleeing. Just as her right foot raised, her shoulder was grabbed. Her head slowly turned toward June, feeling the girl's fingers sink into her skin.
"We didn't… have to kill him…" Wilder reinforced.
Kima rolled her eyes. "You still hung up on that self-righteous bullshit about saving as many people as you can? Listen, I've known you for almost six years now and I'm tired of this! You're so deluded into thinking you're right, you'd rather abandon your friends than admit you're wrong! News flash, June, you can't save everyone! And sometimes…"
She turned toward the shooter's corpse and started stomping toward it. Kneeling beside his bloody body, she threw back the hood shadowing his face, and revealed his brown,
curly hair. June stared from behind Kima's left shoulder… her lips slowly parted as she began realizing who he was.
"Sometimes, you shouldn't—"
She glanced over her shoulder, bearing witness to June's surprise in the form of her widened eyes and parted lips.
"Uh… you okay?" she asked, waving her hand in front of her face.
"That's Katie's grandfather: Ryder Karlo."
"Oh shit?" Kim covered her mouth, kneeling close to the corpse's dead face.
"Why didn't he stop time? He would've killed us so much easier if he did," said June, scratching her chin.
"Incarnated Spirits lose access to their techniques immediately after reincarnation into the New World. That's what happened to Detective Karlo, remember? He was so weak after incarnating initially Katie beat him without Natalia even though she was there," Kima reminded her.
"That's true but—"
The building started rumbling. The duo's discolored eyes shot toward the ceiling, peering through the broken window to spot a silhouette jumping past the skylight.
"Any idea what's happening?" Myers asked, petting Kon's head.
"I'd have to get a closer look…"
June shot her hand toward the skylight, momentarily swinging through the air before jumping from within the pool room and onto the rooftop. She rolled across the platform and crouched against the roof's verge, scanning the environment with Eternal Sight.
Ever further into the distance, one silhouette at the street's end was fighting hundreds of men at once without breaking a single sweat.
'Holy crap, he's tearing them apart! His general fighting skill isn't all that, what's surprising is his speed! He's like a blur!'
"That's Jason," Kima interjected, suddenly crouched beside June.
"What?"
"I recognize those movements. Five years ago, he slaughtered one of the Jester's Deck right before my eyes. If he's one of the players and forced to fight against us, there's no way we stand a chance," she informed the Wilder sister.
"I don't think we have much choice. Remember, we're supposed to get as many points as possible so we can impose rules that restrict other players from baselessly killing innocents," June reminded Kima.
She reassumed a crouching posture seated at the verge, all the while scratching her chin. "I guess you're right," she affirmed her ally.
"We'll talk about my saving habits later. I wanna have a real conversation about—"
Both of their eyes abruptly widened. Suddenly appearing between the two girls
was none other than the fusion between their designs emanating a godly aura: Madisyn Rivera. Her long white hair brightly radiated against the blue sky, all the while her vast purple eyes dug ever deeper into the windows of their souls. Her presence was unlike anything they'd ever felt before; when the apparition of her being manifested before them so many years ago during Naraku's schemes, it was nothing compared to this!
She needn't say anything. Even as she hovered amid the air, glowing brighter than the risen sun, the two girls were too frightened to move at all.
'Her power… has to be ten times that of her older brother! Are we gonna have to fight against HER?!' Kima worriedly thought.
"Kima."
The black-haired girl turned toward her comrade. Instead of cowering in fear and panicking internally, June took the first step, gazing ever deeper into Kim's vibrant orbs.
"It's okay."
For some inexplicable reason, her friend's words in tandem with her soft feminine voice soothed her almost instantly. She was taken aback. June threw herself onto the front line carelessly, throwing her arms ahead with something akin to fire leaking from her eyes. The hovering Rivera sister's head tilted upon spotting these flames leak from June's emerald pupils.
"What's your name?" The hovering woman spontaneously asked.
At first, she was puzzled—which one of them was Madi talking to? June looked at Kim behind her, turned back to Madisyn, and pointed at herself, all the while their levitating foe rolled her eyes at the girl's stupidity.
"I'm referring to the wielder of Convergence," clarified Madisyn.
June lowered her finger from pointing at her chest. "Me…?" hummed the girl.
"Yes. You see, I can scale your strength with just a glance. You're near the realm of the elite, your friend's already there. With the proper guidance, you could rival the might of the Judge himself. So…" The Empress extended her newly-cloaked hand to June. "why don't you join us and slaughter everything on your rise to power?" the spirit offered.
Once June finished staring at the hand and started deeply inhaling, Kima's fingers were already interlocked. Little by little, she started building up Vita in her core—ready to expunge it from her fingers when the moment arrived.
Convergence's wielder slapped away the Empress's hand. Ever deeper into their enemy's blackened eyes, excluding the purple blots named pupils, all she saw was nothingness. The same kind she'd always seen when peering into the Jester's soul from his identically-shaded eyes.
"I refuse. You and I have different senses of value. I'll give you one chance right here and now. Give us all of your points and we won't kill you," June responded.
The Empress's nostrils flared. The instant her fist pierced the air, her eyes simultaneously widened. From June's fingertips alit a singular emerald light, one that shone so bright it electrocuted the air and started destroying everything before it—thus igniting the air before effectively detonating. In the blast's aftermath, Kima removed the arms covering her face and searched for her white-haired friend.
"June?!" she called loudly, wandering amid the mist.
"I'm fine! Don't worry about me, just focus on defeating HER!" Wilder yelled.
"But isn't that Madisyn Rivera?! Ain't she s'posed to be our ally?!"
"That's not our ally. It's her doppelgänger from the Old World incarnated from the past to slaughter us. She ruled over an alternate universe to the Allfather's original called the Kingdom—"
June expelled blackened tendrils from her spine and attacked the space behind her, unfortunately striking nothing but air. The girl's eyes widened. Before she could react, her raised eyes glimpsed at the cloaked fist coursing through the air. The Empress's knuckles sunk into the young girl's cheek, shattering her skull and sending her flying from the inner smoke.
Kon's eyes caught the image of June's launched body exiting the cloud, leading Kima to raise one eyebrow. Falling from
the heavens, the Empress noticed a shadow gateway manifest over Myers' head. Slithering from within the portal came to an eight-headed serpent similar to Yamato-no-Orochi.
Then again, when presented with the Empress's dominating power, all anyone could do was cower. In one fell stroke, the tyrant's purple-glowing hand had entirely decimated the imminent serpent, leaving it bloody and dismembered. Kim gasped a second time, realizing who stood behind her. Now smirking, the Empress tightly grasped the back of her enemy's shirt.
"Let's use the open space some more."
Kim's cheek was struck instantaneously, the Empress withdrawing her steaming fist and instead of throwing her leg over her enemy's body. She fell from the rooftop following the kick, crashing onto one of her Beasts that cushioned her fall upon landing. Removing her boot, she pet the Beast's head and stepped onto the street below. As the monstrous familiar vanished into another blackened portal, Kim retrieved a bo-staff from the same portal while the Empress watched.
"Are you… a Bestial Dimension Shifter?" queried the Empress.
'Someone recognizes my technique?'
"Maybe. What about it?" Kima retorted.
She began scratching her chin, observing while levitating.
'She accesses a pocket dimension of shadows where lost spirits and ancient legends lost to the minds of man wander. What frightening power. Even still, this girl is…'
The tyrant's boots touched the road. "If you mastered that technique, you could be the strongest person in the world. But for it to fall into such incapable hands… Tch! What a waste of talent!" she insulted.
Kima groaned, her hands slowly hovering together. Once her fingertips touched, there it was. The ground began shaking—this girl was finally searching within to utilize the extent of her latent power. As Kim's aura rapidly increased, the Empress's smirk widened further. As she began to lose her footing, she remembered Alex's words.
'A fighter's growth curve isn't necessarily a gentle slope. With a strong foundation and a little bit of sense and imagination, it just takes the slightest trigger to change a person. You know what I'm talking about, right?' The Judge's informative words echoed across her mind.
"Channel the depths of my power into the tips of my fingers. Worry about the specific amount later. Just continuously pile on, no matter how exhausting."
Her fingers slammed together, expunging her shadow's bottomless depths through the tips. That which shook her purple pupils was identical to the look the Fool who thwarted the Kingdom held as he slaughtered her brother. Regardless of how legendary that pest became, the Empress would keep on killing, no matter the era! Just as she was about to fire purple plasma at Kim's body, the world around them was suddenly enveloped.
Nothing existed around them but blackness. The Empress was entrapped—not to mention the second she fired that projectile it'd unexpectedly vanished.
"WHERE THE HELL AM I?!"
"Territory Envelopment: The Benevolence of Darkness."
Sweat dripping down her face, the Empress glanced over her shoulder. Incomprehensible monsters awaited behind her, some foaming from the mouth with vampiric teeth, others shadows from the darkness hovering beside its hideous companions; ready to converge upon their foe. Kim pointed her staff forward.
"Here, I can fight… without restrictions!"
Trivia: 'Territory Envelopment', or in other words, 'expanding the soul's domain,' is a fairly recently-discovered technique. However, Benevolence of Darkness was around when Alex was only a teenager in the Old World. Back then, that move was a trump card for the technique and only served to momentarily amplify the user's powers to something akin to 120% efficiency. With the come of the New World and the advance of Vita mastering by the outside population, Territories were created and added to Kima's move—thus granting her technique a boost of 150%. Better than her father.