“So, how did you escape?” a whisper asked, finally disturbing the group hug Jun was suffocating under.

“I figured out how to attach spacial pockets to objects or surfaces I touch and use it to store things.” Jun explained an early discovered use of the spatial rune that made so many fun things possible back then.

“Anyway, when I had the breakthrough with the sword chopping down at my head, the initial blast of condensed vitality not only delayed the strike for an instant, it also acted like a medium for me to activate my rune. In other words, when my newly condensed vitality touched the sword, I made a pocket on it, and when it came close enough, I hopped in.”

“You… you hopped into… Lincoln Greene’s Annihilation Blade after turning it into a storage artifact….as it was attacking you? You can get inside those?” Tiana murmured, her eyes glazed as her empathy clashed with her professional interests. Traumatic childhood near-death experiences were obviously very terrible indeed.

But storage artifacts were wonderful.

She and Nicole arrived a little late, but the amazing mini Personal Assistant Sophie helpfully replayed the relevant conversations and was all caught up. It was a lot to take in at triple speed replay.

“Is that the name of the giant slab of steel he swings around? Who gave it such a flashy name? Did he name it himself? He looked like the kind of guy that takes something that looks like a door on a Popsicle stick and calls it the Annihilation Blade. Anyway, yes I did and only I could barely enter those because I opened them. Living things aren’t normally able to survive in there. It’s not a pleasant experience.” Jun said, holding in the streams of profanities that always came unbidden when he thought of either the Sword, or the unpleasant memories of ‘resting’ in a spatial pocket.

“What did you do once you were inside the pocket?” Lily asked, wondering how similar the experience was to slipping into the Void.

“Well, I passed out for a few days inside, I think,” there were gasps, “and when I woke up, the sword was being transported like a package under tons of other packages, so I just shifted the entrance from the sword to a package going somewhere else, hoping it was away from anything that would want to kill me.”

“While you were inside the pocket? Is that safe?”

Jun shrugged. “Not at all. It was incredibly risky, but it was the only way that I could think of at the time to get away without getting caught. And it worked, because a few days later, the object I fixed the spatial pocket to crossed the Gate and whatever personnel posted there to look for me.”

Not only had he crossed the Gate, he ended up in a different city. When Jun regained consciousness and peered outside his hiding spot, he found a world completely outside his conception.

The first time he breathed in clean air, Jun was afraid of drowning in it. All the myriads of sights and sounds, absent of dangers and threats, was paralyzing.

When he saw the first child and saw how defenceless it was running around, Jun was afraid for its safety. When he saw people sitting at tables and stuffing their faces with strange foods that smelled wonderful without any sense of urgency, he thought of the old stories his mother used to tell about what the outside world was like.

Peaceful.

It was the first time he was experiencing it, and it freaked him out.

“I still can’t believe you’re Ella Maine’s son. I can’t believe Ella Maine had a son. Then there’s the truth behind her sudden disappearance. How did they keep so much hidden?” Mary and Juan, members of the generation when the name Ella Maine, the Lion’s Daughter, carried significant weight, remembered the rampant uncertainty surrounding her sudden disappearance and the scrubbing of her all images and traces on GRIN, seemingly over night, and how crazy things were because of it.

“Daddy,” little Ella asked up from her papa’s warm arms, “Will you tell me more about grandma?”

“Of course sweety. Next time, I’ll tell you about the time your grandma held hostage the leader of the demon-spider clan and how I robbed - I mean was gifted - a vault of quality silks,” he promised the child that wanted to connect with her namesake. Faded memories were polished with the visiting, and having realized the dangers of losing something precious, vowed to keep his mother’s memories alive by sharing them with his daughter.

“Wow, so your enemy really is the Golden Lion. What a bastard,” Davie helpfully brought the conversation back on track, inwardly still in awe at the level of savagery his softly spoken, crossword puzzle loving big brother was able to display at such a tender age, but then remembered the little monster he and Lily found all those years ago in the park, covered in dark crusted bandages and tattered leathers.

So all that blood wasn’t just his.

“Are we absolutely sure it’s the Golden Lion that’s posted the bounty on you? No other vastly wealthy arch-nemesis you’re not mentioning? No?” Nicole inquired, almost pleading for a second opinion. The prospect of having the most renowned Hunter in the world as their enemy was daunting.

“Sorry, but it’s never too late to back out. It’s why I’m sharing this all with you now- OOF~!” Jun nearly doubled over from Nicole’s cheap shot to the solar plexus.

“Don’t insult our resolve and our friendship.” Tiana translated for her overly emotional friend, who sometimes communicated with expressive slaps and jabs.

She was a monster that needed to be stopped. Her delicate shoulders couldn’t take it.

A firm hand rested on his shoulder and gave him strength. “Kid, we’ve got your back. Don’t worry.”

A chorus of affirmations ensured Jun that he wasn’t alone.

They weren’t just sympathetic; they were mad.

Jun could feel the rage they felt for him and understood because he was raging, too. Someone almost laid their hands on his family that day.

It was time he did something about it.

With how much resolve everyone had shown him to weather the storms together, he had to step up and do his part as well.

He was going to live-stream.

So aggressively.

That would show them.

That would show them hard!

And that was the point.

To show them.

The reason Jun ran away in the first place was to draw attention away with him, but since he did it so well, having been transported to another dimension and all, the attention had nowhere to go but back to where the trail of breadcrumbs first ended, implicating his family and friends.

He wanted the crazies to see where he was.

Five million merits was such a crazy amount of creds that a crazy amount of crazies were bound to go crazy.

The world needed to be able to find him again.

Because he wasn’t running anymore.

——

“I think you should consider going bigger. What about a Boutique Mecha Design Workshop. Doesn’t that just give you the chills just to say? I think that’s a winner for sure.”

“Davie, I don’t know anything about mecha. That’s not really the direction of my research.”

“Tiana, you’re amazing at everything and you know everything about runes. I know a really talented newbie mech designer. From what I’ve seen of his work, I really think you’d be impressed. They don’t seem like freshman work at least.”

“I know I should be happy for him, but it makes me jealous when he talks about someone else like that. Does that make me needy?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Everyone was spread out and lounging in a chic and comfy lounge with small and exquisite works of art, accenting simple and tasteful interiors, and having a wide range of conversations.

Several were gathered around a coffee table that looked like a floating blob of yellow ink stretched out into a surface that wiggled and changed by touch and listening to lil Davie’s surprisingly reasonable pitch for long-term development in the mecha field, while some of the girls were discussing things the boys would pale at by a water feature where the water flowed in several directions, and Sophie was having a rare moment to herself inside an empty cabinet, contemplating in the dark.

Jun was bouncing Ella on his lap, enjoying the sounds of her laughter, when he saw they’d reached the destination he’d set.

Activating something from a panel on the side, Jun sat back and turned towards one side of the room and beckoned everyone else to pay attention.

He wanted them to experience it in the same way he had.

Once all conversations were paused and every head was confusedly turned to an empty wall, the walls disappeared and the outside world became visible, as if there were no barriers.

Floating a hundred feet off the ground, in what felt like to them a mere platform open to the elements, looking out at a seemingly endless plane of unnatural flatness, the group was testing out a luxury craft gifted from one of the Elders.

Because of the issues of compatibilities, it was impossible to use any of the impressive crafts for extended periods outside the Nexus, but it didn’t diminish the grandiosity of utilizing technology epochs beyond their own. It was some seriously cool shit.

The horizon was white under the black heavens and flat. So flat.

But as they went forward, the horizon lost its smoothness.

Small little fangs went from nibbling to down right feasting as they approached, the jagged peaks rising continuously upwards and piercing deeper into menacing black thunderclouds.

It was a breathtaking way of being introduced to the Jaws of Madness, the stunned silence its own kind of ovation.

Closer they approached and the more menacing the obsidian like surfaces and the more familiar those rocks appeared.

When they saw one particular shorty with its peak cleanly sliced off and missing, they looked at the father/daughter combo that was excitedly pointing out funny looking rocks.

So that was where he got the material for the Table of History, huh…

Sophie had reemerged and was busily making several preparations for the live-stream as Head Bunny of Technology.

Drone cams were for the amateurs. She wouldn’t embarrass herself by using something so technologically inferior to record her master make history.

Jun wandered if this was what it felt like to have ‘made it’ when instead of a flock of drone cams hovering around him, hundreds teacup bunnies holding paw-held cameras on little one bunny seater hover crafts were excitedly buzzing about participating in and capturing a historical moment for posterity.

A new god was about to unveil his might to the world. And she wasn’t going to miss a moment of it.

The entire Floating Cam Fleet, from the Cameraman Sophies #1-1000, to the dozens of Support Staff Sophies, was going out in full force.

——

Hundreds received a soft notification signal. While most rejoiced, some despaired at their conflicting schedules.

The Silent Sculptor was streaming again.

If before, the Silent Sculptor had been a spiritual refuge for the weary to rest and appreciate something beautiful, then after that magical live stream over a week prior, and the magical gifts and personal messages…. The Silent Sculptor Fan Club had become the first religion to emerge since the Fall.

Their Idol had rang the mighty bell and signaled his glorious return.

Hunters dropped their weapons, businessmen dropped their briefcases, and parents dropped their children.

Plans were canceled and relationships broken, with some responding to the sudden unexpected news with a risk of madness.

“Two hours?! It starts in two hours?! But we’re five hours both ways from reaching service? Is this hell? Did I die and go to the bad place for all the wrongs I’ve committed? What must I do to repent?!”

For one particular Guildmaster that was returning home, it was a test of the spirit.

“I want to die!”

And she had a long ways to go.