Spoilers from included and/or represented works abound. Please read this fiction carefully.

That soldier awkwardly paused.

"Can you please continue? Vandham? Vandham!" Charlotte called Matthew.

"Oh, ok..." Matthew turned his back to the soldier.

"That voice... how familiar is it?" The soldier then walks away.

-*flashback resumes*

Basically nobody paid attention to that and instead glared at the theatre around him. In what couldn't have been a coincidence for the modern Ouroboros, the screen was silently showing Moebius O and P's interlinked form sliding back from the force of Mio's punch. As if Z were mocking him.

"Where did he go?" Eunie smugged.

"O you who floats in the currents."

Matthew whipped around behind him, fist curled as hard as usual, burstling with one strength. Another dented chair, another split knuckle.

"What!? That man is...!" Matthew is ridiculed.

"Matthew, he looks... like a worse Moebius." Na'el replied.

"How many times must it take for you to understand?"

Z now sat in a seat near the end of the row on the opposite side, hands folded primly on his lap. Noah's own hands clenched and he settled for glaring at him instead.

"How?" Noah growled out angrily. "After everything we all sacrificed, after everything the world sacrificed, how?"

"You are aware of what I am. My nature."

"A concept," Shulk repeated Melia's description of Z. "Fear given form through the will of the people in Origin. The fear of the unknown future that lies in each of us."

"And did you not taste despair at the end?" As Z spoke, the screen started up again. "The same fear that was shared by countless individuals as the two worlds moved towards their inevitable collision, now repeated. Yearning for safety of the known - of the now - in that moment of desperation, countless voices cried, wishing that time would simply stop."

The projection's images shifted, flipping through the faces of countless individuals, most of whom barely anyone recognized. Each expression was twisted with anxiety, fear. Some were better at hiding it than others, but most could see fear in each one of their eyes, especially Noah, Na'el and Matthew.

"And so once more, I answered their call. Nothing could stem the tide."

"You're wrong!" Noah shouted. "People are more than just their fear. They want more than this endless bloody cycle you created. Yearn for the future unbound by the shackles of this world, even if it is uncertain."

"So you say." Z shrugged. "Yet that we are both 'here' makes their choice, as well as your own self evident."

Noah's fist clenched again, and his breath hitched, stopping the denial on his lips as he looked down, teeth clenched. Because hadn't he? Wished for just one more moment before the end? As if his arm stretched out chasing an impossibility. Same from Matthew too - wasn't the restored world the future he promised to his sister?

And the rest followed, barraging and chased Z with all they got. However, Z quickly fragged out of the way, leaving same bits of purple miasma everywhere.

Mio's from the start of this felt her ears twitch in response to a whirring rattle that sped up into a stream of soft clicking noises that sustained since. The sound of it eventually stirred something in the recesses of her memories as the stream of noise faded into the background, after the fight stopped.

M might have left, but the awful feeling Mio gleaned from the grand, gloomy amphitheater remained. Na'el started to feel it as well, meaning she's sympathizing with who could be her great-grandmother.

"So, you return." Mio confronted the scene.

Her eyes widened, ears flattening against her head at the sound of that voice. She quickly stood - stance wide, ready to bolt - looking to the source. Her hands clenched around weapons that didn't materialize, an error message popping up in her Iris display, telling her the source.

"Z…" she murmured. "You really returned."

He gaze back at the images flickering by on the screen. She glanced at them, seeing herself running, arm outstretched towards Noah and the other Kevesians as the two worlds stretched apart, and a pang went through her heart. The memory of that scene was still fresh in her mind, making it difficult to focus.

"So..." he continued in that refined, even tone, "I never expected any of you to return after all this war." His delivery was deceptively smooth, sprinkled with a hint of amusement that made her skin crawl. "But in the end, your desire won out. A fitting twist of irony, would you not agree?"

Mio was fast - probably the fastest soldier in the Agnian army - but by the time her fist would have connected with his face, he was gone. Yet again. The chair that got hit wasn't so lucky, its back buckling under the force of the impact, much to the olden Ouroboros' surprise.

"Why do you continue to resist? Now that you are 'here', why not simply relinquish yourself to the currents?"

Shaking her hand out, Mio straightened up to glare at him, now sitting on the other side of the theatre, still not looking at her.

"Everyone's sacrificed too much to do that," she retorted. Everyone had. That she was here felt like she was wasting those efforts, N and M's most of all.

As if reflecting her thoughts, the images on the screen shifted, showing the world stretching out and out into strings of colour. It quickly focused in on the ghostly forms of N and M, hands intertwined as they went together to destroy the amorphous head that Z had turned into.

"Their sacrifice was not unsuccessful," Z admitted. "For a time, I was repressed. But they are not the whole of humanity, simply a part of the greater collective of human desire. In fact, their disassociation from you is what allowed us to once again find ourselves in 'this place.'"

"I'd rather be anywhere else but here." Glimmer spoke on behalf of the rest.

"Are you certain?" His rebuttal was swift, so self-assured it made her stomach turn. "Even if it gives you a chance to retain your memories and reunite with the one you hold dear?"

She grit her teeth, while Nikol clenches his machine arms.

M had no pleasant memories associated with Z, and Mio's own personal experiences only echoed the sentiment. M hated him for the impossible choice he had given N, how it had almost irreversibly changed the man she loved. From her own experiences in Aionios, Mio agreed with those memories.

"It is only natural," he stated simply. "In the face of a limit of time, it is part and parcel of human nature to desire one moment more with those they love. To stretch out the pleasures and pains of life ad infinitum in tandem with them, even when the results irrevocably change them; even as their world burns around them. You know this feeling quite well."

Her eyes flicked to the screen, showing her - or her in some other lifetime - with her head on Noah's shoulder. Fires blazed around them, and the images focused in on their hands clenched tightly together. An explosion consumed them blocking out view of them, before shifting to another scene: Na'el and the people from the original City - the former as an avatar of Alpha leading the City folks - see old Ghondor confronting his father, N, and shielded Na'el from the killing blow. As Matthew ran and screamed for, Ghondor bursted his Ouroboros powers and blasted it on Matthew and Na'el - which also pushed Alpha's lost conscience into the form of A - entrusting the power for the siblings as the grandfather dies.

M watching on in horror at the devastation N wrought on the original City. The scene shifted to M - as Lady High Consul of Agnus - directing the operations of Moebius, seeing countless soldiers lose their lives. Becoming numb to the pain of harvesting life, of directing countless soldiers in a pointless war.

All because M had loved N, had held on to the hope that she could one day get through to him and find the Noah she remembered. Mio and Na'el turned back to Z, seething, as the projection showed something else.

Mio's ears pulled back in anger. "All of this would never have happened if you hadn't orchestrated it! Forced N to make an impossible choice! All I want is a future that I can choose for myself, unburdened by your senseless amusements. That's what all of us want."

"And not to mention, the pointless war that hurt the City people and both sides!" Na'el agreed.

"Yet as the worlds began to drift, instead of facing your unknowable future head on, you attempted to outrun fate. The result is as you see." Z directed at Mio.

"We never wanted this." Panacea refuted.

"This is ridiculous." Linka argued.

"Yet here you are."

The whole gang refused to dignify him with an answer. It was like talking to a stone wall, and without access to any of their powers or Blade but Nikol's machine, none of them could even properly beat any sense into him, for all the good it would do.

A soft laugh escaped from Z. "You think me nauseating."

"Are you serious?!" Matthew questioned.

"Of course. You just don't understand humans at all, do you?" Mio agreed. "In our fear, we might want things that will only hurt us, but that isn't who we are."

"Why not help me better understand that notion of yours?" Z gestured vaguely to the dark, empty theatre around them. "After all, we've nothing but time."

"He wasn't actually suggesting what she thought he was, was he?" Linka whispered to Panacea.

"Not a chance," Mio responded coldly, "The entire time she was Moebius, M was always looking for a way out. Clinging to the hope that one day, she and her Noah could be free of the shackles that bound them. Looking for true freedom. For true life."

"And there's the fact that if a generation couldn't accomplish all that in time, they gotta let the next ones do it, down the line." Matthew told Z. "Who knows... maybe it'll even be Moebius like you."

"And as Moebius, she was an embodiment of life. It is something that no matter how much I try to attain, I will not." Z calmly refuted. "Because I simply am. But you have felt it, the grand ambition of a people aiming ever higher. The sublime moment."

Mio shook her head. "The kind of life you represent is a sham. A shadow. Not the full of it. I'll never rejoin you. I'll end this." She didn't know how, but she would resist with every fiber of her being, even if she went back into the cycle with the world undone again. "If you could be destroyed once, you can be destroyed again."

"Yeah! That's grandad's mum she is!" Na'el agreed.

"Thanks, uh... You look... familiar." Mio recognized Na'el from the statue from the City. "Anyways..."

At last, he finally turned his head to look at her, and she would be lying if that didn't send chills down her spine.

"Are you willing to take the chance? After all, here I remain, even after your efforts and successes." Z offered everyone. "Why not resign yourself to the flow once more?"

But then Noah and Mio hesitated. For the smallest instant, a part of her imagined herself agreeing. Imagined doing what M did, implanting herself like a spy amongst the ranks of Moebius, waiting for the moment to strike. Except... having already seen with his own eyes what that did to N, neither would repeat the same mistakes, no matter how tempting, no matter how much that part of each wanted it.

An instant later Mio squashed the thought as well. It would never be worth it. Na'el also refused thinking about her time as Alpha's vessel, despite remembering the death of a child named Chyra in the hands of some random Kevesi soldiers back then.

Noah breathed out. "Maybe, in the end, my resolve did falter. Maybe I wanted just a moment more." He looked up, facing Z directly. "But even then, after that, even if I had that moment of weakness, I still want a better future, even if it's unknowable. That's just human nature. If you continue to stand in the way of that, I will resist it with every fiber of my being! And if I can't, others will take up the torch."

Steeling herself, Mio looked Z properly in the eyes. "Not a chance. No matter how many times it takes, we will take you down."

The silence in the theatre that followed was heavy, broken only by the consistent whir of the device projecting the moving images on the screen.

Z chuckled. "As ever, your dichotomy fascinates me. Very well."

"What?" Everyone were taken aback.

At last, Z turned to face them all, and his eyes glowed with Moebius' blood-red never-ending Iris. Blue motes began flowing off of everyone clouding their vision. So…that was it then, was it?

"Let us see how far the flow takes you this time." Cue the flash covering the theatre.

-*flashback ends*

"And the next thing we knew, we got trapped into this prison cell. Were they... using us as some..." Matthew continued.

"Guinea Pig?" Angelique heard it.

"And we got our memories back. But for some reason, eight of us is exactly here, and the rest unknown." Na'el responded.

"Can you locate the prison?" O.M.A.C. intervened.

"The Beach, floating 'Netherrealm'." Shulk replied. "Cell RNFL-X3000."

"Do you know anything about the Order of the Pariah that I can learn about?" Charlotte questioned.

"That 'N' and 'M' seems very evil. They ain't like those Moebius." Matthew describes. "Apparently, we were trapped and sent by them."

"N? M? Wait... they are..." Charlotte noticed.

"This is looking sus..." The same soldier earlier came by.

"Oh no! We might be caught!" Na'el is shocked.

To be continued...