Mark was still grinning slightly as he stepped into the backyard of the house. It was a simple outdoor space with big walls for some easy privacy, and some nice trees and grasses. Not much more than that.

Mark started by stripping, completely.

Isoko was inside and not watching, but she still went 'woop woop!' loud enough for Mark to hear. She had felt his slightly embarrassed vector, for sure. Mark had nothing to be embarrassed about, but he still felt that way sometimes.

Mark began with the simple stuff; feeling through his adamantium. With an easy touch, Mark took his spare adamantium and ran it across the solid ground like a finger, feeling the concrete under his touch… and it was weird. Before, Mark could feel through his adamantium like his adamantium was the back of his forearm, or maybe as sensitive as his inner arm. But now, Mark felt the floor like it was his own fingers touching the floor.

Mark glanced at his fingers, and also at the adamantium he had softly running along the ground. He hummed, and then he flexed his spare adamantium into a hand-shape. A full hand expanded under his Adamantiumkinesis, and Mark felt the floor with it, just like he would feel the floor with his actual hand.

Mark lifted his 'third hand' into the air, and then made a fist with it, and with his real hands… and… which one was more 'real' than the others? Were any of them his 'real hands'?

They all felt like his real hands.

Mark moved his third hand through the air like it was his real hand. And then he looked at it, and he saw his 'veins' pulsing under the skin of his hands, like there was blood in there. But there was no blood. The hand had a wrist and then nothing.

Mark started breathing hard—

Mark controlled his breathing, to not freak out, as he separated his 'real hand' and then put the third hand onto the stump of his hand, and then he let go with his Adamantiumkinesis, relaxing his control to baseline. All he was doing now was floating his adamantium around himself, casually. The third hand remained on his arm, like it was his second hand. The 'real hand' floated to the side, still hand-shaped.

… Mark pulled apart the 'real hand' and turned the pieces, into… into a foot! And then he pressed down with his third foot onto the ground, and it was like stepping with his real foot. And then he replaced his foot with his third foot, and he couldn't tell the difference at all.

Mark plucked both arms off and then put them both on one side of his body.

He turned his legs digitigrade with claws and dragon-scales.

He floated his head off of his body and put it into the middle of his chest, buried into his chest, and he kinda relaxed.

And it all stayed like that, how he made it, and he could feel through his arms and legs and feet, and Mark took his manhood and erased it, and it stayed like that, even when Mark relaxed—

Mark almost started hyperventilating but he didn't.

He breathed with Good and Bad, and his body gradually flexed back toward how it was before, but if any of his individual 'cells of adamantium' were where they had been, when Mark started, Mark had no idea. He could not track where his 'original body' was at all.

Mark had made a joke when he pulled his head off in front of Lola and Isoko, but Mark was freaking the fuck out.

This was too weird.

Too uncomfortable.

There were good things about this, for sure. But…

There were some very good things happening here.

Mark was no longer a physical person, tied to biology. Some people were like that. Stretchy bodies, elemental bodies, various Powers, all did the same sort of thing. It made the body into one thing, and that one thing was interchangeable with all other things like that. The 'real person' existed in the astral body, and the physical body was just an extension.

Most people with bodies like this ended up dying exactly how elementals died; they got split from their parts and their unifying spirit didn't have enough stability to reassert itself upon the world. Just like elementals, though, they could be healed like normal people, though depending on the person their rate of healing could be good, or terrible.

There were a few Water Body heroes in the HVP that could balloon large or small, based on how much water they had in them. Mark had only ever thought about those people in a 'that's neat, I suppose' sort of way. Now he was thinking about them a lot.

They could usually still eat, and breathe, and gradually heal themselves if they had enough of themselves left to heal, and, Mark suspected, as long as they were still able to make more of their own mana. But… elemental people died when their parts were separated from them for too long…

Which was true of just about everyone, Mark suddenly realized.

So maybe he was being too hard on this weird, adamantine body.

… But then Mark recalled one hero by the name of Hydropunch, who had been critically injured in one of the shows Mark watched when he was a kid. He had been frozen and then shattered. He never came back next season. He was dead. Mark wondered, now, if that was played up for the camera, or if freezing was an actual liability, and did that guy really die? Probably not. Elemental Bodies were not elementals. Phase changing was either a way to kill an elemental, or not; didn't always work out.

But Mark wasn't a normal Elemental Body right now. He was metal. The world's strongest mana-metal, to be precise. The same mana that his body naturally produced, too.

Mark imagined that he could exist in this body roughly 'forever', never really die, and he was immune to the main problem that normal elemental people faced. Mark was also a Shaper of his own element; he was not able to be truly separated from his physical body unless he actively pushed it out of his astral body.

Mark detached his right arm and then turned it into a sword to hold in his left arm, and then he relaxed, and the sword flowed into his body, and came out the other side, shaped like his right arm once again. Mark detached his right arm and left it on the ground. He relaxed, and his body remained how it was. His body 'on the ground' remained there, while his body 'in his body' was still there, just fine.

Mark flexed the detached fingers of his right arm, and then he made his hand stand on his fingers, and then he walked his arm around on his fingertips. The concrete floor felt rough under his fingertips, but also sort of like sand. With a casual pressure, Mark rubbed the concrete with a fingertip. The sound was like a car scraping across the side of a building.

Mark winced.

Anyways, Mark was a Shaper so he wasn't going to 'lose' his adamantium that easily, and his physical body was never really 'disconnected'.

Also, Mark was pretty sure…

Mark detached his arm and then really let it go, putting it out of his kinesis completely.

In fact, he put all of the rest of his extra adamantium out of his kinesis, setting it all aside, and then he breathed in the Good and breathed out the Bad, repairing his body. Just a normal Good/Bad, too. Not focusing on anything specific at all.

His arm came back, and a lot faster than Mark was used to it coming back. Usually he had to do a rapid cycle of different kinds of Good/Bad, to at least focus on maybe his bones, first, so that the rest of his flesh had something better to adhere to. A base was necessary for the rest to come. If you started with a Union of Skin/Skinless, before you had bones or muscles or anything else, you'd end up being a sad sack of a human being.

Literally, too.

Lola had shown Mark pictures.

But now, Mark was just…

His mana was adamantium, his body was adamantium, and since Union repaired his body, converting ambient mana and resources from others into Mark's own mana, he converted everything into adamantium, into himself… Maybe. Mark wasn't sure about that.

Mark picked up his discarded arm with his Adamantiumkinesis. It seemed like his discarded arm was about as much adamantium as he usually walked around with, before all of this. He asked Quark, "Estimation of weight, Quark."

Quark said, "The extra arm is about 155 kilos of adamantium."

"A bit more than my usual allotment…" Mark hummed as he picked up the rest of his adamantium, and said, "Estimation now? Full weight."

"In total, about 2950 kilos."

So Mark could 'heal' himself and make adamantium. Just… make the stuff. Straight up.

"… So I think I broke the adamantium market. Probably… not good..."

Mark ignored that, for now, to focus on figuring out if he wanted this body, or not.

Elaria had said the options would either be to undo this, to solidify it, or to accept an unknown third option—

In that moment, Mark thought about Elaria talking about how the empires and powers of the world had petitioned Malaqua to remove demons and dragons from all mentions in the System, and in that moment, Mark realized that petition had likely killed a lot of people looking for help. But, on the other hand, removing references to demons and dragons in the System probably prevented a lot of people from seeking out demons, which, on the whole, was probably a good thing.

It was kinda weird to think that the people of Earth could actually petition a god for an overall change, too. Like… what was up with that?

… Mark put that thought on the backburner.

And then Mark pulled off both his arms with a tug of Kinesis, healed himself so he had two more arms, and then he pulled those arms off, too. He healed another 2, and then he put the extra 4 arms onto his body, below his current arms.

Spider-Mark.

Mark accidentally hit himself several times over the next several minutes, all of his arms a jumble, all of his hands moving weird, but he was moving them with his body and not his kinesis, which was why it was all messed up. Mark focused, breathed calmly, and then he gently clapped his original hands together, followed by his secondary hands, and then his tertiary hands. Clap, clap, clap.

With slow movements, Mark stepped to the side, bringing his left hands further left one at a time, while keeping his right hands stable in a line down his torso. His middle arm fucked up and went too fast, but Mark concentrated and moved limbs that he didn't think he would ever have, like they were his own. And they were his own.

Were the bones connected? Was blood moving properly? Were nerves connected?

No, no, and no!

Didn't need any of that when you were pure adamantium, through and through.

"How the fuck is this even working, at all?"

Mark had no idea.

He should consult other people with elemental bodies, for sure.

Mark disconnected his extra arms and floated them to the sides then he turned them into four identical kaiju blades. Mark spun the blades around with his Kinesis, in a quartet then in a spiral, then in a slashing echo-cut, where one blade followed the other. He sliced through the air and then spiraled around again into a twisting shape, like the spokes of a wheel.

Mark stilled his blades, and set them aside.

With some concentration, Mark turned himself into the shape of a woman. Breasts, other parts. He decided to go for Isoko's look, but in black metal, and about a meter taller. He relaxed, and he stayed that way.

Mark walked around, feeling very funny to have so much weight on his chest, and so little weight down below.

Mark turned into a dragon, but small. He only had so much metal. He relaxed, and he stayed that way. He moved his wings like they were wings, and he flicked his tail, easy as flicking his tail.

Mark turned into a net of adamantium, stretching his body up and out and then spiralling inward to form several layers of monowire and thicker wire in a jumble that spread out, filling a good amount of space. He had no head. He had no eyes. He lost track of himself, except for through his proprioception, and his sense of where his adamantium was. He could have stayed like that for a while, but he did not want to do that.

He was rapidly reaching the limit of his ability to ignore all of this horror he was doing to himself.

Mark turned back into himself, and then he plucked out his eyes and floated them around, and now he had several eyes all floating everywhere, all giving him different lidless views of the world. It was confusing as fuck, and Mark could not parse all of the information, all at once. He tried! For 10 minutes he tried.

He wasn't sure how to turn off the extra eyes.

Mark put the extra eyes into his body, bringing them inward, into his chest, his shoulders, his back, and then further inward. One by one, as soon as Mark stopped thinking of them as eyes, they stopped acting as eyes.

And then Mark turned himself twice as tall, and badly; he only had so much adamantium, after all. His legs and arms and spine were stretched a lot. Not fun. Even when he relaxed he remained stretched. Mark forcibly turned himself back to normal, and he hoped, so very much, that he was back to being the right size.

Mark breathed hard, and not from exertion, at all.

Inside the house, Isoko was concerned because Mark was concerned.

Mark shook his head a little and pretended everything was fine, and then he made a sunshade and lounge chair out of all his extra adamantium. Isoko gradually decided that, sure, he was fine. Because he was fine! Sure!

Mark put his clothes back on as he sat down as asked, "Got any videos on people with elemental bodies, Quark? Main problems they face. Stuff like that. If there's a bi-Talent Shaper one, I want to see that one, too— If there's a tri-Talent I'd want that one, too, obviously, but I doubt that such a video exists."

Tri-Talents were already rare as fuck.

Quark said, "Bringing up videos, now. Here is the most popular video, based on views, and another Shaper and Elemental Dark Body video that might be relevant."

Two options appeared in the air. On the left was a thumbnail with a person made of stone, and another person made of water. It was 4 minutes long. On the right was a person made of black, with black flowing around him. That one was 17 minutes.

Mark watched the first one, first.

"So you've Awakened an Elemental Body! Welcome to an exclusive club! We have benefits and drawbacks that most people will never experience, and hopefully, by the end of the video, you'll know more about what you are, and what you can do. Let's go over all the major points, rapid fire…"

Most of it was stuff that Mark already knew, from biology only being a suggestion, and not a fact, to differences in ability to heal, to finding out that some things tasted good and other things tasted bad, and sometimes you lose the ability to taste at all, unless you really tried to get your tongue back.

Some stuff was new.

"Your sex drive and most biological imperatives will crash. Hunger, breathing, blinking, all of that will be decreased, and sometimes go away entirely. One day, you will wake up, and realize that you haven't breathed in a week. Good news! You can fix some of these things by making sure to manifest certain parts of your body all the time. Keep your tongue around, or you might lose your ability to taste. Keep your genitals around, or you might turn asexual!"

"Note that some of these fixes don't fix everything correctly. You will have decreased biological imperatives. That's just facts. Sorry."

"You can still have a sex life! You can still want to have sex, too! Relationships with others are still very possible, and all you have to do is manifest certain parts double, or even triple!"

"You might find yourself deciding to be with people based on who they are, or who you are, regardless of your original sex or gender, and you can change your own parts to reflect who you want to be—"

Mark paused the video, almost on reflex, as he thought about all of that.

He looked down between his legs…

… Could he make himself have a libido? And be like… a normal person?

Pursuing relationships and finding love and having someone there for him forever?

Mark had experienced physical attraction for the first time in his life a few months ago, when Aurora came in from killing 3 kaiju that one time, and he tried not to think about it too much since then. But now he thought about it.

Eliot constantly built relationships with people, and he loved it. Sally was currently interested in someone, but Mark had stayed out of it; he still felt her deep affection in some unknown direction occasionally, though. Isoko liked Mark, but more as a friend, and only because Mark wasn't interested in her at all. What happened with Isoko is the same thing that had happened with Sally when they were kids and they were figuring things out in middle school, and then high school. Sally had found out she was a lesbian, with vague hetero tendencies, while Mark found out he just didn't feel anything for anyone.

But could he just… double up on his balls, and get a libido? Would that work? The video seemed to imply that it would.

… That thought was too big.

Mark put that thought away and continued to watch the video.

"—and though relationships are still possible, you're now infertile without great magical intervention."

"Or lesser intervention! Talk to a mage to find out more!"

Mark felt some kinda way about all of that, too.

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Soon it was over, and Mark moved on to the next one with the Shadow Shaper/Elemental Body guy, though the notions about sex stuck with him a lot. Mark didn't have sex, want sex, and he didn't pursue it either, but he wasn't blind. People formed relationships based on physical intimacy all the time. Mom and Dad were in love and they had Mark, and Mark… wanted to have kids someday, too.

Eventually.

In like… a nebulous sort of way.

How would he get there, though, if he didn't care for anyone except for one splash of desire, one time, several months ago?

Well. The nobility had children all the time without love. But also, Mark was pretty sure that people with Love Powers existed, and those people were in high demand. He had heard Eliot talking about that once, one time, and Eliot was a noble and expected to have a family someday, so he would know.

A while ago Mark had wondered about becoming a noble, so that he could get a lot of power, to do everything else he wanted to do in life, from that expedition to Endless Daihoon for Resurrection magic, to getting really good magical items.

Mark had a lot of power, now, and he was not a noble, but if he wanted to become a noble, he needed to have a family and a way for his power to be inherited to his children.

… Did he still want to be a noble?

Yeah, kinda. Being a noble with a house backing him, with a bunch of strong ties to other powers, would make him a lot more legitimate. Right now he was just some big damn hero.

Big damn heroes got crushed under organized power all the time.

Could he be a noble, with an infertile elemental body?

Well… Addashield passed on his Adamantiumkinesis to Mark, so… that would still qualify Mark as a noble, right? If he had 'kids' that way?

… Or was that human experimentation?

Mark continued to watch the Shaper/Elementals video. It was a remix and expansion of the previous video. Mark had already guessed that being a Shaper meant that his Elemental Body was able to interact with all of his separate pieces just fine, and that he couldn't really be separated from himself that easily, and the video confirmed it. Basically, Shaper Elementals had fewer restrictions than normal Elementals, and they were very, very hard to kill.

Pretty much impossible to kill, actually, just like elemental kaijus.

The second video did go a lot deeper into the implications of being able to put your body parts out there, and what your 'body' actually was.

In short, your body was what you thought it was; your mental image dictated what you were. Elemental Body people were therefore highly susceptible toward Mind powers that could alter a person's sense of self. By that same token, Mark didn't actually have veins in his body right now, but he still pulsed his 'heart' with Union, and it worked the same as it had before.

"… Now there's a question."

Mark created another heart, in the air to the side, and pulsed it like it was a heart—

Instantly, Mark had another sense of Union, of Good/Bad, and black astral veins flowed from that heart, beating in the air like it was his own, in his chest. Veins extended inward, to the heart, while arteries extended outward, growing and growing.

Mark watched as another body grew out from nothing.

And then he was himself, watching himself, from both bodies.

"This is fucked up," both Marks said, at the same time, both of them looking at the other. "How the FUCK did this happen?" The Mark sitting down stood up, and the Mark standing up went to the one sitting down, both of them saying, "Nope! Nope nope nope—"

Mark crashed into Mark, metal melding, and then discarding in one big splash of adamantium, leaving one Mark standing tall, and nude again. His self-repairing shorts were currently wrecked and on the other side of a bunch of adamantium, so Mark swirled the adamantium into the air and then set it aside, before grabbing his shorts and holding them in place while they repaired around him.

"There's only one Mark," Mark told himself, "Quark. Call up Blackthorn, please. I need professional advice, soon."

"Calling Archmage Steve Blackthorn."

Mark expected to leave a message.

Blackthorn answered on the second ring, slurring his speech, "Ma— Mark! HellOOOOOO!"

"Uh, hello, Blackthorn," Mark said, hearing people in the background making noises.

"ConGRATS on the GOBLINS! Gobble gobble! Ha… No no, honey. Not right now— Gobble gobble later— Later! Uh! Mark!" Blackthorn moved to another room or something. Fabrics swished. Someone grumbled discontent in the background as another person giggled and said 'gobble gobble!', and then Blackthorn came back, voice strong. "Okay. I sobered myself. What's happening! How's it hanging?!"

Mark smiled a little bit at the attempt at humor, and said, "It's hanging big and black, and I'm not sure I like any of it, and all of me is currently in a state of 'dangerously incomplete' and, according to Malaqua, I should 'Consult your local <insert valid consultant here> if you wish to learn more.' " Mark added, "I heard that I need to talk to an archmage… with a demon. Or a dragon, to uh… solve it."

Mark lost steam at the end because he realized that Planty was 'on vacation' and she probably didn't want to be involved in all of this, and Blackthorn didn't either, probably. But who else was Mark going to talk to? Walaria? The Empire? Fuck no. Mark might trust them eventually, but not right now. No fucking way. But if Blackthorn said 'no' then Addavein was the next option, and that was absolutely going to cause problems, so Mark didn't want to do that.

But he would.

For a moment, Blackthorn was quiet, though Mark heard a hum from his side of the phone.

Blackthorn said, "We'll do it for 1,000 kilos of adamantium."

"… That's a lot, Blackthorn. Like. A lot, a lot. You would never ask that much of anyone, ever, because that much simply doesn't exist in normal times."

"If Planty and I are doing this, then that means we're taking a step into the game, and Planty says we need the resources to fend off problems, and that you probably have those resources. Good news, it's a single spell I have to cast and I've done it before. You'll get flashed with prismatic mana and then be able to select options from the System yourself. I don't have to inspect your Binding first, but I can do that and tell you some expected outcomes of the flashing. If needed, I can help you nudge the prismatic flashing into something more directed. The usual options with an unbalanced Power are to solidify it with the missing parts, remove the broken parts and return to baseline, or go off in a new direction."

Mark debated with himself for 10 seconds, then said, "For 1,000 kilos I want more than anything you'd ever offer anyone else, ever before. I want answers to deep questions. Anything and everything I can think of. I'll ask questions about Xerkona and goblins and the Dragon King and the System itself, and magic and demons."

Silence.

Mark gazed at the auroras overhead, beyond the wall of the settlement, waiting. Thinking. Did he want this? Yeah. He did. Yes. This was a good choice. Mark could heal himself and make adamantium—

"Okay, Mark," Blackthorn said, "Deal."

Mark breathed out a sigh of acceptance. "What time should I show—"

The world flexed around Mark, subtly, quietly.

A massive vector suddenly appeared around him, where there had been no vector at all before. The world condensed, and Mark knew what was happening. Mark scoffed, and then looked up, and said, "Fucking really, Addave—"

It wasn't Addavein.

The Archmage Force twins stepped out of the air on both sides of Mark, Buckler and Lancer, completely surprising him, and then Mark felt their vectors. They were on a mission. A wash of bubble spellwork began to crash around him—

Mark instantly went into a Union of Alacrity/Slowness.

Mark wanted to kill both of them, brutally.

He did not do that.

The clear bubble almost surrounded him completely, but not fully, and it wasn't a bubble. It was bands of force connecting one twin to the other via outstretched hands, like a million threads of Union meshing together, all at once. The connection of those threads was beginning to close off Mark's Union with the outside world, too. Were they sped up with speedster powers? Maybe. Neither of them looked good. Buckler was bleeding from his eyes, lips, and sweating blood, and Lancer was pretty much the same.

They were going to take him somewhere.

Were they acting on Walaria's orders? Or on someone else's?

Was that feeling of Addavein in the air a false feeling?

Were these guys a backup plan to use against Addavein kidnapping Mark again?

Maybe. But then why not tell Mark about it? 'Because then Addavein would know', was the obvious answer to that.

But, honestly, that was pretty shitty reasoning. What did some full reasoning look like?

One: They were doing this on their own.

Two: They were doing this on orders from Aluatha, for Mark's safety.

Three: They were doing this on orders from Aluatha, for Mark's containment.

Four: Their demons were involved, because Blackthorn had said that Planty was willing to get involved now, and that was a Big Deal. Lancer and Buckler were both archmages, after all. They had demons.

There were probably more reasons than that, but those were off the top of Mark's head, in this almost-frozen slice of time. He was going really, really fast mentally, wasn't he? Hmm! Mark supposed there were some big benefits to being made of metal, instead of meat.

Anyway.

That feeling of Addavein in the air? Was that a real feeling? Could be a fake feeling. These two were faking a lot before they got here. Were they getting into place for the last half hour? Or whatever? The settlement had some measures against Addavein summoning Mark ever again, of course. So they might have been a part of that. But no way, right? They were untrusted archmages, and Mark was pretty sure that the defenses the settlement had against Addavein were more of the 'no rifts opening up around him in the settlement' kind. The gate even limited other possible gates in the area, not to mention Eliot's Castellan and all the other Castellans doing the same thing.

Why were they here?

Ultimately, Mark didn't know.

All he knew was that people were trying to kidnap him, and Addavein (maybe) had been trying to kidnap him, too.

Mark could either allow himself to be sucked up by the archmage's bubble, or… There were some small openings in their net right now. Mark watched as one of those openings threaded closed, like someone drawing a slow line through an opening in a net. It was slow. Mark had time to escape through some of those holes… maybe. But not a lot of time.

And then what?

Addavein would suck him up into a portal onto Earth? Because he couldn't suck Mark through a portal into anywhere else… except maybe Endless Daihoon. Portals had to go between worlds; they couldn't link places on the same world… maybe.

Ultimately, Mark didn't know.

All he knew was that he didn't want to be caged.

Mark turned his left leg into liquid adamantium, moving at the speed of thought and burning the air as he moved that fast. The cage flexed at the heat but it held strong. Mark tested one of the holes in the cage. The opening was only about 8 centimeters across. Mark got his leg through just fine, but the speed of his movement caused the air to burn and the cage to flex. The thread suddenly snapped against his leg, the entire bubble shifting to cut him. The threads of force managed to get 50% through his metal, and then something weird happened.

The cage got stronger, the threads of bubble-force turning slightly darker as they drank in Mark's adamantium.

The hole closed through Mark's leg, cutting him off completely from out there, as the bubble drank in his mana. That's what adamantium was, after all. Just mana.

… Shit.

Mark could figure this out.

Mark found another gap and then turned his face into a tube and then stuck himself through that gap. It was disconcerting to move his face that fast, to see the world through flames. But he was an uncoupled Shaper, and adamantium could handle those sorts of speeds. Soon, Mark's head and part of his torso were through the hole.

The gap snapped around the rest of Mark's body, leaving most of him inside of the cage.

Mark grabbed the metal he had left outside of the cage, made himself a body, and then looked around for Addavein's vector… But now that Mark was outside of where he had been, standing in an unmoving world, Addavein's vector wasn't there.

What he saw, though, from this angle, was a person who was more of a jumble of light and air than a real person. That person was casting a spell in the entire area, with Mark's former location at the center. Their spell left illusions in the air, and from this angle the illusions were obvious.

Mark tore the air with speed as he walked over to the person, shockwaves pulsing from his movements, detonating against the ground. Mark didn't get too close to the person because he didn't need to. His shockwaves pulsed against their illusions, shattering them, revealing a masked person wearing white webweave, hugging their entire female body. That could be a lie. Might not be female. Mark had just proven as much when he turned his shape to female, hadn't he?

Anyway.

Their shape wasn't any that Mark recognized, so it probably wasn't Walaria or a witch. But they were absolutely filling the world with vectors that were not real, so… not Freyalan, but maybe? They had some sort of Union-adjacent power. It wasn't Union, though. It was more world-warping.

… Mark decided he didn't want this fight at all. They were too prepared, and they probably had backups.

Mark spun up a rotor. At these speeds he didn't need to make it too big to make it super effective. The very atmosphere was like moving through thick mud. A spin into the air, and then Mark was up and away, dashing out of the settlement at incredible speeds—

Yoro Windrunner, the speedster and Wind Shaper master spy of the settlement, was running around the place down there, doing whatever he normally did that no one saw at all. He was going really, really fucking fast, even at the speeds Mark was moving at. Did he do that shit all day, every day? Why was he doing it right now?

Whatever!

Mark could trust that guy.

Yoro didn't spot Mark, though, and then, suddenly, Yoro stopped in the middle of one of the noble streets, looked up at Mark, and put his hands on his hips. And then he stepped into the air, coming Mark's way.

Mark was a fireball soaring through the sky, so yeah, he was easy to see right now.

Yoro stepped up to the air near Mark, asking, "The fuck is this? Do you KNOW how much fucking destruction it's going to cause— Of course you do. Something happened. One second. I'll check."

Yoro went down to the ground near Mark's house.

Mark turned his head with Shaping so he could look down.

Yoro threw his hands up in disgust, and then he walked back up into the air, to Mark, and Mark moved his head, tracking him, and Yoro freaked out for a moment. Yoro wagged a finger, saying, "Don't move your face at me. That's fucking freaky. Whatever. Go on. I'll deal with this shit… Uh. Can you answer me at all? What is that down there? Can you talk at this speed?"

Mark shook his head.

Yoro's eyes went wide and he said, "Your entire face deforms when you do that. Don't… It's fine. No need to try fine mouth control. Probably just spit out fireballs. Gah…" Yoro gestured back to the house. "The FUCK is that shit— I'll figure it out! Just a head's up, you're paying for the damage this fireball of yours is going to cause when it finally spreads out. Have Quark send me a text when he finally catches up— Oh! Is Quark able to talk? He usually talks fast enough for me sometimes."

Mark wondered that, too. Probably not, though. Quark was capable of moving very, very fast when needed, but usually he was already moving fast when Mark joined him in a moment of speed. But Quark hadn't been ready for it right now, so he was still on slow-time.

Mark made himself shake his head.

"Ugh! No." Yoro turned away and gestured to the side. "Go on! Get away so that they can't track you. Send me a message from Quark about everything and then come back when Aurora calls you."

Mark was still flying forward this whole time, so he just continued to do that, though he did let up on his Alacrity/Slowness some. He didn't want to spend an hour doing 10 seconds worth of getting-away.

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