The Hyper Confrontation 1 – Arrival of the Enemies

John sat on a rock in the pine forest near his mansion.

He had been sitting there for several hours. Philosophy books played on the phone, keeping him company. He had done the same thing the day before. If Hypercrush was coming to him directly, as Lorelei thought he would, then he wanted to be as far away from any infrastructure as possible.

The air in front of him began to crease. It was subtle at first. A less experienced Abyssal may have considered it to be just a trick on the eyes. John calmly pulled the headphones from his ears and put them away. Just as he moved his phone into his personal pocket space, the Y-axis tore open.

John got a brief glance at a dimension of colours and weirdness. A contorted, oversaturated colour-scape reminding him of the gaps between the segments of the Eternal Sanctum. It was a portal into that space between Illusion Barriers that only gods and other truly powerful, magical beings regularly were capable of entering.

Out of it stepped Hypercrush.

The **** mage had gotten taller since John had last seen him, now reaching two and a half metres. The rainbow-coating of his inner hair appeared to be soaking into the outer streaks now, although that could have just been an illusion created by the constant, magical winds that affected him and his compatriots specifically.

They stepped out of his portal one after another. Five people, surrounding their leader in ridiculous superhero poses. All of them wore white bodysuits, skintight, decorated with colour highlights. Rainbow light iridescently sparkled in the air around them

There were three men and two women. A young black man with a white mask snorted powders off his forearm, the remnants of the **** starkly visible beneath his nose. A short, rotund guy poured **** jovially onto his bald head, then lapped the trickle off the top of his big nose. A skinny, green-haired punk took a hit from a comically sized blunt, running his hand over the shape of his mohawk as he did. A white-haired woman with green eyes tossed handfuls of colourful pills into her mouth. Lastly, a short-haired blonde with blue, crazy eyes injected herself with something red.

John was familiar with all five of them.

“Can’t say I am surprised to see all of you have betrayed me,” he said.

“You just could not keep your hands out of the cool business, dawg,” the dark-skinned man said.

Jake had been a member of a trafficking organization in New York City. He had been the accidental benefactor of John being more lenient in the early days of his conquests, courtesy of having more to do. His connections had never been formally investigated, but the Gamer had known and thus kept an eye on him.

“We all just wanted to have fun!” said the rotund wielder of the bottle.

Kyle had been part of the many, many small guilds of Florida and had even managed to make it on the cabinet at one point. Momo had quickly sacked him after it came to light that he was embezzling funds and a rampant alcoholic that could not be trusted with any state secrets. Afterwards, he had attempted to rally against Momo and had some success in leading one of the derisive newspapers.

“All you had to do was let me in!” the white-haired woman said.

Samantha was a stalker, plain and simple. She tried to get close to John on multiple occasions, even breaking into several of his mundane residences. He had only learned about this later, after Aclysia had curtailed the woman thoroughly.

“You can’t make progress without experimentation!” declared the blonde with the syringe.

Tabbie was a member of the Apothecary who had been put behind bars due to her flagrant violation of Fusion’s policies against human experimentation. The Apothecary guild had put pressure on Fusion to release her, and for the sake of relations, John had needed to oblige.

“I can’t wait to see you die, man,” Leslek said.

A former, high-ranking member of the Lake Alliance turning their coat was something John had expected at some point and Leslek had always been the primary candidate.

All of them had been in the level 100 to 200 range. It would have been idiotic to assume they were still within those ranges. Whatever Hypercrush was right now, with his prismatic blazing eyes, he was capable of empowering others. ‘They arrived too early to run out the clock on the Court Dust,’ John thought. ‘Pure **** it is.’

“We are the prophets of the high!” Hypercrush declared. “The chosen of the cravings that refuse to starve in soberness.”

“Mhm…” John hummed, apathetically. He had a whole monologue he could respond with, but what would be the point? They were not clear enough to get it. There was only one thing to be said. “Beast, I am willing to give you a fighting chance. One of yours against one of mine, in locations of my choosing,” the Gamer stated. It was not the smartest way to assure his victory, but it was the best way to mitigate damage to the landscape. “This is the only small mercy I offer you.”

Hypercrush clapped his hands in front of his chest. The **** of the sonic boom was enough to make the trees nearby bend. “I HAVE FORESEEEEEEEEEEN IT!” Hypercrush yelled manically. “WHOOOOOOOOW! I am at the top of my game!”

“Yes, you are, **** Master 5000!” Samantha dropped to her knees, taking a position between worship and submission. No doubt she would have started sucking his dick, had Hypercrush stopped air-thrusting for long enough for her to pull his trousers down. If that was even an option with the bodysuit. “You are the only proper Master. Everyone else is just a stick in the mud with no taste for women.”

A wave of icy air washed over the clearing. Aclysia did not bother to hide within Nightingale’s shadows any longer. Her veneer of grace was gone with her maid outfit. Thick scales of ice covered her like thick armour. Every movement of hers echoed like a frozen lake cracking.

“You absolute harlot,” the weaponized maid growled, lips pulled back so far that her sharp teeth were on display. “I will tear you limb from limb.”

“Try me, bitch!” Samantha answered, then threw another handful of pills into her mouth.

“I take it you accept my terms?” John asked.

“YEAH!” Hypercrush shouted. “AND I GET TO CHOOOOOOSE WHO FIGHTS WHOOOOO!”

“All the same to me,” John answered and stood up. “Name them.”

“Ooooh, the high… it speaks to meeeeeee!” Hypercrush rubbed his temples. “I can see it in the divine hallucinations of the shrooms… Yes… YES! YES! YES! YES!” He beat his chest repeatedly. “Samantha will fight Aclysia!”

“YES!” Samantha sounded borderline orgasmic, then began to actually masturbate. “Oh, yes, thank you, daddy!”

John thought he had reached the max level of being weirded out by all of this, but Samantha fingering herself while licking Hypercrush’s boot did the trick at putting that into overdrive. After getting herself off, his former stalker crawled over to Aclysia, who stared at her with naked disgust. “And you think yourself worthy of my Master?”

“Psh, I know he loves this!” Samantha said, then barked like a dog.

“You know nothing of my John,” Aclysia hissed.

“Oooooohhhh! Another vision is coming to meeeeeee!” Hypercrush’s eyes sparked. “Kyle… shall fight… Moooomooooooooooo!”

“This time you can’t stop me drinking!” Kyle laughed.

“If you want to knock yourself out before I beat you up, be my guest.” Momo’s voice echoed from every needle that hung from the trees, long before she removed herself from Nightingale’s veil. The viscountess of the Midnight Court barely offered a dismissive glance to her opponent to be.

Hypercrush’s body language suddenly relaxed, a placid smile spreading on his face. “In the cocaine-fuelled beats of my heart, I hear the voice of victory and it is sweet. Tabbie, show Claire the sweetness of your blood!”

“Can do, boss!” the blonde said and stepped forwards.

“Oh, I am looking forward to this,” Claire said, stepping out, a parasol keeping her in shade.

“Jake, Jake, my boy, you will kill Nia!”

“Don’t call me a boy, boss,” the masked man said, lips twitching between smile and frown, “but imma smack that bitch for go-“

Nia appeared in front of the man mid boast. There was no sound to hear, yet John heard one. A low, single pound of a drum, beaten directly into his ear. The un-sound must have reverberated in the head of the man as well. Nothing had seemed to faze the Hypercrew so far, yet Jake took an involuntary step backwards.

“Resign yourself to oblivion.”

John himself shuddered, hearing genuine malice in the ice-cold voice of the pariah. Her learning to emote had been done in service of expressing her joy, yet here was her anger with those that would ally with a murderer.

“Whatever, biatch!” Jake proclaimed, voice shaking, before snorting another two lines of coke off the back of his hand. After that, he had enough courage in his blood to step aside, waiting next to the blonde for the fighting to begin.

“I shall fight Nathalia!” Hypercrush announced, without any dramatics.

“Thank you.” The dragoness entered the clearing, her face haughty with supremacy. She put a hand on her hip and gave him the once-over. “I was afraid I would not get to kill you myself. You ruined a perfectly good holiday.”

Hypercrush did not appear as if he had even heard any of that. He did a little dance while tumbling towards Nathalia, something between a drunken sway and a highly energetic raving. “Aaaaaaand Leslek shall have his ****! Fight the Gamer, Chosen of the Blunt!”

The green-haired punk inhaled deeply, then exhaled with such intensity that the cloud of white smoke carried all the way to John. “That’s, like, really nice of you, man,” the former elite of the Lake Alliance stated.

Flames engulfed John’s hand as Purgatory manifested as a dragon claw, fused to the long sleeve of his shirt. A sweeping gesture dispersed the stinking smoke. Then, he stood up. “Alright then, everyone relax.”

The Hypercrew did nothing easier than that. Slouching where they stood, sat, or crawled, the chosen of the **** were one by one whisked away. John himself was gripped by the magical energies of his Fateweaver. Lee reassembled their positions with the ease a supreme Fateweaver would have created matter.

John and Leslek emerged in the middle of the arena. The Nympholympic stadium towered over them, empty except for those members of his harem that were not to be part of any other fight, which was the majority of them. “HAH!” Leslek laughed, looking around. “Always a show-off, aren’t you?”

“Do I even bother answering that?” the Gamer asked out loud. “Are you lucid enough to get what I am saying to you?”

“Oh, I am plenty here, this is as much a cocarette as it is a blunt – and everything else, you fuckwit.” Leslek laughed at his own randomly thrown in insult.

‘Yeah, he’s not here anymore,’ the Gamer thought. “You really rob me of everything,” he lamented out loud. “You rob me of peace of mind, of my reputation, and now you even rob me of the satisfaction of ridiculing you.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Leslek answered, still giggling. It did not look like he wanted to keep giggling. There was something painfully **** about the twitching of his shoulders. He only stopped after slapping himself. “WOOOO! I am so ALIIIIVE!”

‘Yeah, I am never even looking at Court Dust again,’ John thought. He had never been as happy to not have taken it a second time as in this moment. “Well, even if you won’t get it… I’ll take a moment to gloat.” John directed his gaze up at the sky. “Why do you think I waited for you here?”

“’Cause you wanted to enjoy your fucking until the last minute, you tyrannical degenerate prick,” Leslek answered with certainty.

“No,” John said drily. “No, I waited here because my seer told me that was the proper thing to do.”

“Yeah, sure. Only the high gives true clarity, idiot.”

“Yeah… so why was that? Why should I fight you here rather than protect my Guild Hall? What did this place have that the Hudson Barrier did not? I had to scan for the answer for a minute… and it became obvious once I heard you were missing in action. It reminded me of a little something I can thank you for.”

A window popped up in John’s field of vision.

Lee: Alrighty, I am set up. Give it about 30 more seconds.

“What are you talking about, dude?” Leslek asked.

“Remember the Hudson Brawl?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, when Jeremiah destroyed the Illusion Barrier Mass Anchor there, we replaced it with a subpar one Magoi had half-built in a hurry. We never got around to replacing it. Of course, the Guild Hall is created by Gaia-given powers, so it can’t really be interacted with either. But this place…” John tapped his heel twice on the ground, “…this place has a state of the art IBMA. Cutting edge technology.”

A short, prismatic flash enveloped the stadium. The thoughts of his many summons spiked one last moment, embracing his and each other, before a sudden distance isolated them from each other. John was still looking at the sky above. A filter laid over the blue, as if he was looking through a soap bubble.

“It can withstand being tampered with.”

“Neat trick,” Leslek drawled.

“Neat trick…” John muttered. “You have no idea that you’re inside an actual breakthrough in technology. You’re in an advanced prototype, the second time this has been used in the entire world. You are in an Intermediary Trap Barrier that’s been isolated out from a Protected Space!” He shook his head at the lack of respect given to his favourite gamer girl. “Why am I bothering? Not like I need to stall anymore.”

“So what’s next then? You call in your elementals? Beat me up all together?” Leslek grinned at him. “I win no matter what.”

“Yeah, yeah.” John waved off. He did not deny that calling his elementals was in the cards. He just had to type a message to tell them to pull the cord on their cooldowns and he did not even need his own hands to do so. The Creator Puppet and Ambassador Double were still active. However, he only planned to do that if he needed to.

Why deprive himself of the opportunity to limit test?