Eli fidgeted with his stopper he'd grabbed for his to-go coffee while he waited in a tucked away corner in the Pandemonium Cafe. He'd meant to sequester himself for comfort, but he'd accidentally sat down near the restrooms and felt beyond awkward about it. The rest of the tables and booths had filled up with people chatting on their lunch break or other students or people doing work on their laptops. Eli glanced up again, then winced.

Maeve still wasn't there, and she was running late.

He rubbed his dreary eyes that ached from lack of sleep while he re-summoned a copy of lumencloud with Avaricious Vault to revitalize himself a bit. Voidspace Horizon wrapped around his table in a tight cordon so he didn't accidentally spread his spatial field too far into the restrooms or the rest of the restaurant. Hyper-Regeneration jumped on the copied lumencloud and guided it through Body of Light with a shivering rush.

The past two days had been a constant grind of assignments, power training, and a deep dive into Herbert's family and messages with his relatives. He had pushed himself so hard that Hyper-Regeneration had offered to reconfigure his brain to boost his short and long-term memory. It had already reworked his nervous system and other parts of his brain to boost his processing speed. All the work he'd allowed, guided, and prompted it to do on his body had pumped it up to level four. He knew it was only a matter of time until it maxed out and was ready. Avaricious Vault was close behind.

Bells jingled on the door. He glanced up, then grimaced when it was just a couple leaving.

Eli leaned back in his chair as he fought to keep the rising tide of jumbled nerves calm. He tried to prompt Hyper-Regeneration to soothe his uneasiness, but it ignored the response in favor of asking him if he wanted it to ensure his body produced more glucose for more energy. He declined its offer of diabetes.

Vibrations rocked his phone in his voidspace as someone called him.

He teleported it discretely into his hand, hoping it was Maeve with an update, but it was Hazel. He answered the phone right as a tall man walked around the corner to step into the bathroom. Embarrassment flushed through him.

"How was it?" Hazel asked breathlessly over the slight rustle of static from whatever she was doing. She had mentioned going to the gym earlier, but she had also said she was going to create her city model too.

"She hasn't shown up yet." Eli sighed, then winced as a woman sitting a few tables away glared at him over her laptop screen. He folded space around his spatial field to try to contain any sounds he made. "I keep expecting her to send a text or call, but nothing."

"Do you want me to swing by?"

"I don't know... It might be kind of awkward." Eli shrugged while he pushed the tangle of emotions that came up from that suggestion away. Apparently Herbert hadn't mentioned Hazel at all and he'd feel awful stealing what he assumed was his counterpart's first sort of girlfriend meeting his family away from him. He didn't really know what Hazel and Herbert were, let alone what she was to him.

"You haven't told them about me still?" She sounded almost hurt as she sighed. "Well, okay. I don't know if I want to do this right now, especially over the phone, but I don't like that. Last Thursday you were saying you wanted to be a bit more serious and then over the weekend you've pulled back a lot ever since our date. I thought at first you were acting like a completely different person and in some ways I like it, but I'm not sure what's going on. Do you even want to date, or what?"

Eli winced at that while he tried to think of a response. How did you respond to acting like someone else when you were someone else? Should he tell her the truth? Confess he wasn't Herbert (even though Herbert was his middle name), but that he enjoyed spending time with her and didn't want to hurt her? Would he tell her about his own growing feelings?

He opened then closed his mouth. Dimensional travel wasn't absolutely unheard of, but it was rare enough that he didn't want to cause waves. Especially since he and Roman had stolen their counterparts' lives in a very literal way since they appeared here four days ago, technically five since it was in the middle of Friday night, but still. He didn't know what would happen if they told the truth.

"Okay, fine. I'm sorry. This isn't the time, but... I want to talk later, okay?" Hazel hung up before he could respond. Eli cradled Herbert's phone in his hands with a grimace. What was he going to do?

"Rough phone call?" asked a blonde haired woman who had a pair of sunglasses resting on the top of her head. She wore a gray-blue sundress with a cardigan wrapped over her shoulders. Dried bloodstains dotted her boots beside the smeared clods of dirt.

"Yeah." Eli looked up, then blinked as recognition flashed. Maeve looked exactly like her pictures, but he hadn't realized how familiar she would look. Maeve was the spitting image of Mom except for the dark blue of her eyes from Dad. His heart ached as he realized an unknown longing for an older sibling of his own. "I've been talking to a girl, but I don't know..."

She nodded as she pointed at his coffee and asked, "What did you get?"

"White chocolate mocha." He shrugged while she set down her sunglasses and a shopping bag with DELVERS stamped on the side.

"Finally mixing it up from almost black coffee?" She smirked before she turned around to walk over to the counter. "I'll order real quick then we can sit for a bit and chat or head out. Sounds good?"

He nodded, then frowned as she walked over to stand in line while she played on her phone. Eli's thoughts returned to trying to figure out what he was going to do. Guilt gnawed at him after seeing Maeve, who looked eerily like she was his sister already. But he wasn't Herbert. Bitterness coated his tongue with the tang of every lie he had to tell just to fit in. But how much worse would it be if they told the truth? They didn't belong here in any way or fashion; they were just reflections of their counterparts.

Eli didn't want to be locked up with Roman or destroy Herbert and Les's life by fucking it up, playing pretend. He was struggling to do any of Herbert's assignments, interact with his friends, and not to mention his difficulties with the Delve team. He was far too weak to contribute as it was. How was he going to ever find the time to untangle the mystery of dimensional travel if they kept living a life that wasn't theirs? Besides, he kind of felt like he owed it to Herbert's family and Hazel to tell them the truth.

But how would that go?

'Oh, hey, because of the Initialization my parents' enemies from almost two decades ago escaped prison, tried to kill us, then marooned me and my friend here in your dimension? Herbert and Romulus are probably in our dimension back home, but don't worry!’

That didn't exactly inspire much confidence.

"Hm, it tastes good." Maeve smiled as she came back with a white chocolate mocha of her own. "I like how they're able to enchant the coffee to adjust the temperature and flavors based on what powers people have."

"Oh yeah? I didn't notice." Eli took a sip of his own and frowned at how cold it had gotten. He prepared to discreetly teleport the coffee out of the cup so he could warm it up in his voidspace, but Maeve tapped her finger to the cup first. A power with unfathomable depths unfolded from her to encompass his mug before distortions flickered through it. Steam wafted from the lid's spout. "Thanks."

"Of course. Well, what do you think? Walk around, or do you want to sit here and chat?" She took another sip while she watched him.

"How about a walk?"

"Lead the way." She gathered her things before she let him walk in front of her as they left the cafe. Paranoia nipped at him while they followed the weaving path through the aisles out of the building into the sunlight. Eli smiled as the warmth of the sun danced across his skin before he turned around to meet Maeve's narrowed eyes.

Color leeched out of the world while her glare sharpened. Space skipped with a series of nearly imperceptible leaps until they stood in an identical world of black and white. Sunlight and wind vanished along with all natural motion. Strips and fragments of voidspace lit up in his awareness of his tattered spatial field. Whatever power she had over space not only far exceeded his own, but it was entirely different.

"What... is... this?" Eli gasped as the air in his lungs and in the world barely moved in response to his rising terror. Every ragged breath was reduced to a feeble wheeze. He tried to move, but it felt like the weight of the world rested upon him.

"Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?" Maeve demanded as a tendril of lightning burst from her hand before it shattered and froze six feet away as it reformed into a wicked crackling blade of electricity. Storm clouds burst from her skin in a swirl before electricity ricocheted from each wisp of cloud as it turned into ceremonial plate armor inscribed with sweeping patterns. Only her face was left bare.

"What?" Eli blinked as a fraction of the leaden heaviness planted on his body lightened. Oxygen flooded his lungs as Hyper-Regeneration swept through him in a flash before he swapped it out with Lumencloud Fortification. Power streamed into him, but it was a hollow strength rendered meaningless against the absolute sheer control she possessed of their surroundings.

"Who. Are. You." Her long razor-thin blade straightened as she pointed it straight at his eye. It was so thin and perfectly structured he could only see the tip that boiled with all the contained turbulence of a wrathful storm.

"My name is Elias Herbert Newton! I'm from another dimension. I accidentally got sent here in the middle of a fight with our parents' enemy, Sandra. Right as my friend Roman killed her, she dumped us here. I think that Herbert and Romulus were sent back to our dimension, but I'm not sure."

Maeve frowned at him while she listened to his rambling prattle. She let go of her now floating sword with a roar of laughter. It shifted, so the tip dug into the ridge of his brow just enough so it didn't pierce the skin. Maeve started pacing while her sword held him hostage. She didn't say a word or make a single noise as she walked around him while she studied him at every angle.

True terror sizzled from the pit of his stomach as he fruitlessly tried pushing with Voidspace Horizon to teleport away from her in this space or to even reach across to where they had been. What was this? Some kind of domain or dimension power? Whatever it was vastly outstripped his powers to where they were parlor tricks compared to what she had displayed so far.

Voidspace Horizon was completely unresponsive except for the glimmers of voidspace he sensed around them. Hyper-Regeneration had worked, but barely. Lumencloud Fortification hardly worked with the almost immovable air around them. Avaricious Vault bridged from him off into his vault cluttered with plinths and shelves of whatever junk he had stuffed it with. Including a rack full of lumencloud weapons like knives, swords, heavy clubs, and even a bow and quiver full of lumencloud arrows. A mannequin bore the suit of lumencloud armor he'd painstakingly created, then enchanted with Hyper-Regeneration.

He was a bug in the palm of her hand. But if it came down to it, he'd fight with whatever he had to survive.

"So. Let me get this straight Elias Herbert Newton. You claim to be my brother from a whole other dimension sent here against your will?" She appeared right in front of him as she teleported through this bizarre space. "Do you really expect me to believe that?"

"It's the truth."

"Well, there's one way to find out." Lightning crackled in her hands as she created something else. Adrenaline surged through him as he yanked and clawed at the surrounding space with Voidspace Horizon. Eli was supposed to be free with his powers. How was he going to be held captive in space when he had evolved from Voidspace Mastery to this?

Muscles thrashed and vibrated with tension as he flexed to slip away as chains attached to crescents formed in her hands.

Eli hadn't come this far to die like this.

His will beckoned Avaricious Vault, and it answered as copy after copy of his armor appeared in a shell around him. Each carefully fashioned plate fizzed as he reabsorbed it into himself to stoke the luminous tempest inside of him. Strength, Stamina, and Perception ignited as his body transformed into radiance. He summoned one final suit of armor at the same time he created a fresh one until he was a behemoth of lustrous power.

Handcuffs dangled from her fist as he tried to throw off the fetters of her black-and-white world. She raised an eyebrow as she opened one cuff to snare it over his radiant wrist. Memories seared across his vibrant eyes as he unleashed all his gathered light and lumencloud at once to move.

Eli's body jerked to the size with a seismic effort of will. Light and radiant clouds seethed from his skin with a whimper from the sheer difference in their powers. He didn't understand what was so different from Maeve's powers compared to what Sandra or Daniels used against him. They had been near the cap of peak evo-3 and he'd defeated them easily. Why could he only thrash uselessly against her?

"Be still." Maeve tutted as she reappeared next to him as if this alternate world bent to her will and brought her there. His teleports were so violent in comparison, as if he ripped space apart, while she was just there one second, then here in the next. He brought all of his power out to strike, to flee, and it didn’t even faze her. She bent to clasp the handcuff over his wrist again when he commanded his powers to take him away from her.

Violet light spat out sparkling tears in the devastation of voidspace from his skin as Avaricious Vault pulled him into its embrace.

Eli heaved as he collapsed in the middle of his vault with a flare of light and color as her overbearing influence vanished. Notifications scrolled across his vision, but he ignored them as he pulled himself. His legs quivered as he copied and absorbed light into his body to recover. It was interesting how solid and timeless his copies felt inside of Avaricious Vault, as if they were the real thing. Relief filled him once he reached the genuine suit of his armor.

Another suit of lumencloud armor flickered over him as he created a copy and devoured it for its fortification and the Hyper-Restoration enchantment woven inside of it. Voidspace stretched around him as his spatial field repaired itself and showed him the small, but endless potential in size, space, and power inside of the vault.

Vibrations shuddered through the vault, rattling everything he had stored as black-and-white embers drifted through the air. It split with a resounding boom as Maeve stepped through a tear into his vault. Splinters of agony rammed into his spine from the head down as she walked closer to him. Color smoldered as the black-and-white residue of her power spread. He just wanted the pain to stop.

"Leave me alone," Eli hissed as he ripped a lumencloud spear off the rack and hurled it at her with a shove from each of his powers. Space folded as the butt of the spear exploded in a jet of howling winds. The vault constricted around its passage as it faded almost to nonexistence while the spear overflowed with power. Body of Light radiance bolstered it further.

"Huh." Maeve caught it with a squalling squeal as the spear shredded itself into a hailstorm of frozen lumencloud shards that pinged harmlessly off her armor. Illuminated beads of cloudy water dripped off her before the spreading black-and-white stain of power immobilized each bead in the air. She reappeared beside him as she dragged him out of the vault back into the monotone representation of the real world. Handcuffs clasped around his wrists for a moment before they vanished. "Interesting. You have some explaining to do, Elias Newton."

Eli stumbled as the tension that had corralled him in whatever sort of spatial field her power vanished as color returned to his body and clothes. He turned around in confusion as the world around them blurred before color and sound returned with the sunlight and wind of Anchora city. They stood on the rooftop of one of the towering skyscrapers across town.

He turned around to ogle her in bewilderment before he noticed with a blink that her storm construct armor and weapons had vanished, leaving her in her dress again with her coffee in her hands. Eli checked his status with a frown before he glanced back at her and her patient, unyielding gaze.

<Congratulations, Elias Newton! You have leveled up the following power: Hyper-Regeneration Ev. 0/Lv. 4 -> Hyper-Regeneration Ev. 0/Lv. 5>

<Congratulations, Elias Newton! You have leveled up the following power: Avaricious Vault Ev. 0/Lv. 3 -> Avaricious Vault Ev. 0/Lv. 4>

<Congratulations, Elias Newton! You have leveled up the following power: Avaricious Vault Ev. 0/Lv. 4 -> Avaricious Vault Ev. 0/Lv. 5>

<Congratulations, Elias Newton! You have maxed out the following powers:

Lumencloud Fortification Ev. 0

Enchanter's Dominion Ev. 0

Hyper-Regeneration Ev. 0

Avaricious Vault Ev. 0

You may now select from one of the following options:

Evolve Power

Merge Power

Obtain New Power>

Eli beamed at the sight of him finally maxing out all the powers he needed to finish. He was excited to see what they would become. However, he read the next notification that followed with a grimace.

<You have been incapacitated by Maeve Newton! She has read your entire status:

Elias Newton (Human)

[Stats:

Body: Light (Photon Shot)

Mind: None

Will: None

]

[Equipped Power List:

Slot One -- Enchanter's Dominion Ev. 0/Lv. 5 (Maxed)

Slot Two -- Lumencloud Fortification Ev. 0/Lv. 5 (Maxed)

Slot Three -- Voidspace Horizon Ev. 2/Lv. 0

Perks Equipped: [Subspace] [Proprioception]

]

[Unequipped Powers:

Hyper-Regeneration Ev. 0/Lv. 5 (Maxed)

Avaricious Vault Ev. 0/Lv. 5 (Maxed)

]

[Unequipped Perks:

Blight

]

"How the fuck were you able to read my entire status? I didn't think that was possible!" Eli shouted as he glared at Herbert's older sister, who studied him impassively over the rim of her coffee cup. "And what was the point of all that? I told you the truth. Why did you have to handcuff me and everything?"

"How about this? You answer my questions, I'll answer yours. Thankfully, you are human and not some new sys-spawn abomination that got its hands of life altering powers or shapeshifting‌. Now. Let's start with what you mean by 'coming from another dimension' and how you got swapped with Herbert?"

Eli nodded as he explained about the fight on the night of his birthday. Then he had to explain who Sandra and Dave were, along with everyone else in their band of prison escapees. He told her about the mall and how he had fought to save the lives of the other victims and how he thought his family was in danger. How he lost his arm and the doctors couldn’t heal it or remove the residue from Dave's shadow powers.

Maeve listened calmly while she nodded or winced the slightest bit at the different parts of his story. But she said nothing while he wound himself up more and more as the full story poured out of him.

"They broke into our home, these two guys, apparently they were on a spree of burglaries and assaults or something and chose our house. Dad noticed because of the Technomancer power he had, ‌the one he eventually sold for me. It was horrible. I hoped they'd leave, or that it wasn't real, but one of them came up the stairs and went into Lana's room across the hall. After that we fought and it happened so fast. Lana and I killed both of them."

"Your Rick and Adelaide did nothing?" Maeve raised her eyebrow at that, as if that was the most outlandish part of his entire story.

"I mean, it happened in a matter of a minute or two once they got upstairs. Dad came out, but that was about it." He shrugged, unsure what else he should say about it.

"Mom and Dad would've crippled anyone who dared to invade if that happened here." She shook her head with a frown. "I can't even imagine not having the System or powers up until that point. Your home sounds like a mess. The only real positive is that you don't have sys-spawn there, but... I don't know. Your government sounds like a dying relic of an old world. That makes me nervous about how Herbert is doing there."

"What do you mean?"

"Ever since he Initialized a year early at fourteen and got Hydro Dive, he's been obsessed with becoming as strong as possible so he could go to any university that was a part of the Tri-Delve Cup. He spent five years doing little else but training for that moment. He scoped out all the local dungeons run by Dungeon Masters, joined a Junior Delve team so he could go farther. He even convinced Dad to take him to the Stormshrine Dungeons so he could farm for rare powers to fuel his rise to the championship. Now he's unleashed on a world without spawn to kill or dungeons to delve?" Maeve snorted.

"Um, yeah?" He blinked as he tried to understand who Herbert was and who had replaced him. This whole time he'd been worried about fitting into Herbert's life, and now how he was fitting into his.

"With only people to fight or compete against, Herbert is going to either start a lot of 'problems' or he's going to whip your barely Initialized family into shape." She chuckled for real. "Your world is fucked if they try to pull the dumb shit they did with you. By the Savior, I wish I could see it."

"Oh..." Eli winced as his imagination played scenes of Herbert going on a rampage against Tom if he tried to bully him or hit on Lana. His imagination quickly grew out of control at the idea of a Herbert out of his environment with natural outlets for his talents and passions thrust into a world on the brink of national disaster with the growing riots and unrest. That would not go well.

"But I guess I'll have to get you ready instead. Your dinky planar and spatial powers are far from enough to get you home so my brother can come back. Your powers are also far too weak if you want to win the Tri-Delve Cup, and if you're here, you will win it. I won't allow you to lose Herbert's only chance at winning, even if it is only in name. Understood?"

Before he could even nod, she started pacing while a dulled lightning spear crackled into her hand.

"Good. Your build is far too limited now, but we need to get you a second power to slot into a stat immediately. I don't know what the fuck you're thinking, having three spatial powers, but you'll need to merge those‌ somehow. Your Lumencloud Fortification is okay, but if you're going to have a storm power worthy of Dad’s legacy, you'll need to beat the Tempest Dragon in Stormshine Dungeon. And we'll need to get your powers up at least to mid evo-2 if not evo-3."

Eli blinked in growing horror as the color leeched out of the world again around them except for his body and the immobilized streamers of sunlight that fell around them. A cloud brimming with thunderbolts formed in her left hand, but no armor appeared.

Horror mounted in his gut as her spear dipped so it was pointed straight at his chest.

"Arm yourself. We start now. Once I have a feel for your style, you'll finish your pending powers."

Lumencloud armor appeared around him just in time for a tremendous impact to crash into his chest as forks of lightning crackled into his body as he flew back into the railing with a crack. He climbed to his feet unsteadily as he summoned another copy of armor that he fortified with a fresh burst of lumencloud.

"Too slow." Maeve threw her next spear again with unerring accuracy. Billowing radiant clouds rumbled around him as it broke his armor again. Eli flopped through the air as radiance dulled to his mundane body. He narrowed his eyes while he shaped the inverted voidspace into blades that he injected with more lumencloud. He popped out a portal in front of his chest to return her thrown spear at her while he teleported behind her.

Voidspace blades grated as the caged torrent screamed through the rifts—

Thunder rattled his bones as her spear darted out of his portal to slip around her to strike his chest again.

He threw himself at her again.

And again.

Over and over as he pushed himself as hard as he could to even scratch her.

Eli would win eventually. It was only a matter of time.