One moment, Roman felt a light pinch on his shoulder.

The next, he found himself standing a short distance away from where he was before, with a sobbing, nearly hysterical Neo on the ground in front of him.

It happened again, he realized. This time, only a couple seconds had passed between his partner trying to pinch him and her crying, cursing the world for taking away one hell of a consolation gift; far from the yearlong gap between dying above Vale and being brought back to that drab, apocalyptic acre. Of course, his course of action was to come to her and let her release her sorrows onto his shoulder as he brought her into a warm hug.

When that little moment was over, however, he wondered:

What am I, really?

Roman stared at the palms of his freshly bare hands as he sat down on the rock, having taken off his gloves a moment ago. Neo was walking circles around him and the rock he was perched upon, unaware of the thoughts rummaging in his head.

Those are my hands, right? Roman turned his hands to view their backs. This should have been impossible; they were undeniably his hands, just as they had always been from then to now. In that same sense, his body was the same as it ever was. At the same time, he couldn't fathom the concept that whatever body he had now was the same as his original one.

Roman clenched his fists in defiance. This is pointless, he thought, mentally slapping himself in the face. I'm here to make up for lost time! Why bother with philosophical questions?

He stood up. He leaned on his cane as Neo stopped to turn toward him. She unholstered Hush, pointed its sharp end at him, and raised an eyebrow, smiling. Roman immediately knew what she was asking for: a simple spar.

"Alright," said Roman, who got into an offensive position, "why don't I go first?"

Neo assumed a defensive position.

Wasting no time, she simultaneously made herself invisible and conjured an illusion of herself, then peeled off to the right, planning on striking Roman from the side. The trick would have been nearly impossible to pull off even a couple days ago, but whatever had happened to her Semblance vastly enhanced its already impressive capabilities.

Somehow, Roman saw it coming; it only took him a moment to swivel Melodic Cudgel's aim from the illusion to about where Neo was, much to her surprise.

The flare burst into flames on impact, shattering Neo's invisibility illusion as she nearly tumbled, narrowly managing a three-point landing as she slid against the ground.

Roman disappointedly looked back at the fake Neo, now joined by two more doppelgangers, and shook his head.

"I hate to slow your roll, but you know the rules: no Semblances during training," he stated bluntly.

Whoops.

As she returned to her feet, Neo sheepishly nodded as she dissipated the illusions. The three illusion Neos, consigned to their fate, slouched over and pouted, pink squares quickly eroding them from the bottom up. Roman nodded approvingly.

"Thank you." Roman then beckoned Neo to resume the spar, and she was happy to oblige.

Thus, the two returned to the intense, rapid clanging of weapons in a race to disarm one another. Neo had almost forgotten what it was like to spar against her longtime partner. All those little tricks and quirks of his style were beginning to come back to her as she found an opening in his defense: around his chest area.

She thrust forward, sparks flying as Hush deflected Melodic Cudgel to the side. A well-paced strike to the heart turned Roman into rushes of colors spread across shards of glass, once again fading into a nothingness of pink.

Even though she knew it was coming, the sight of Roman shattering again shocked Neo. Fortunately, it was now a trivial manner to resummon him.

So, she took a deep breath and brought him back.

"Going for the heart in a training session?! Man, I must have missed a heck of a year," Roman exclaimed.

Neo nodded. Roman had known her to toy with her opponents—victims—but her going straight for the kill was a foreign concept. Had failing to kill Ruby and then (allegedly) watching her kill him changed her like that? Regardless of what had happened, it didn't take him long to connect the dots.

There was something else bothering him, however.

Roman was so used to being knocked back, whether by the strike of a weapon or the blast of an explosion, that to suddenly find himself standing in a different place with no warning was quite disorienting. At the same time, he felt something oddly familiar within him, but it was rather faint. He wasn't sure what to think, but it was certainly getting to his nerves.

"And to think I was once a sturdy man." Roman groaned. "Why am I fragile these days?"

As he complained, however, Roman heard a shimmer. Neo blinked in her confusion as she squinted, almost as though she just saw something.

"Eh?" asked Roman, who was wondering what had happened.

For a second, he thought Neo was trying to play a trick on him, but it was anything but. That once faint feeling had suddenly grown into an overwhelmingly familiar force that surrounded his new body. Not only that, but he could feel newfound sturdiness in spite of his now glass-like nature.

It was almost like his Aura never left.

"Hold on," Roman said, raising his hand, "was that... what I think it was?"

Neo gave him a moment to think. In turn, Roman smiled; the thought of having kept his Aura even through death was a joyous one. Not one to rest on his laurels for too long, Roman felt it was time for a bit of experimentation...

"If you'd be so kind, would you try that again?"

Neo hesitated, then stabbed him in that same spot that led him to his third demise of the day.

He didn't shatter. "Ow."

Roman looked down to see cracks around his chest where Neo had stabbed him. His Aura had started to fill in the cracks, sealing them closed in only a few seconds, and the sharp, albeit faint pain he felt faded away with the cracks.

"Aahhhhhh..." Roman smiled haughtily. "Now what was that about sturdiness again?" he jabbed, already feeling cocky.

Neo breathed a sigh of relief. Roman began to think of the ramifications: no longer would he have to worry about suddenly shattering whenever Neo or anyone else so much as sneezed on him. While he would still have to deal with his fragility, he knew that his Aura would more than make up for that.

That taken care of, his mind started to wander, nearly lost in the realm of possibilities that his state as a living illusion opened up. 'Could I make myself invisible?' Roman pondered. 'Could I copy someone's Semblance?'

"Hey, Neo," Roman began. "Remember when you were turning me into all kinds of different people?"

Neo nodded. "Could you," he asked, "possibly turn me into someone you know?" She nodded again, then took a deep breath.

Sure enough, the pink polygons returned to change Roman's form. This time, Neo didn't seem to change heights at all; instead, all he saw were her, the scenery surrounding the two, and faint dark lines running horizontal to his vision.

Well, half of his vision, anyway; the other half was completely gone. He felt a dull pain on the left side of his face, but that wasn't relevant to his concerns—not today, anyway.

He inspected the sword now in his hands. It was a straight sword with a red, single-edged blade that, judging from a radiating hint of heat, was enhanced by the Fire Dust embedded within. The sheath was more of a sawed-off rifle than a proper sheath, although it still held the sword in place perfectly well.

Right away, he recognized that Neo had transformed him into one Adam Taurus, that animal of a violent revolutionary with whom his... boss had done business. Thanks to her deal with the group, he'd enlisted additional helping hands from their ranks and provided them with carefully "procured" advanced Atlesian technology, an ordeal that seemed like it had happened only yesterday. Yes, Roman knew that it had technically happened both yesterday and over a year ago, but that kind of contradiction was hard to reconcile.

Never mind that, he thought, looking at the trees, what can I do as him?

From what he'd heard, Adam was able to decimate entire large machines with a single swing of his sword. If he was Adam right now, couldn't he do the same?

Roman concentrated, sheathing his sword at first but continuing to wrap his hand around its hilt. He began to channel his Aura into the sword, its blade beginning to glow a solid red, just as the heat from the Fire Dust promised. He could have sworn the environment went dark around him, with only the red lining on him visible, but Roman ignored it and swung.

One shing later, an startled bird flew off as two trees in front of Roman started collapsing in pieces, starting with individual branches falling off one by one before their trunks unceremoniously fell to the forest floor with a huge CRASH. While that miniature symphony of destruction played its tune, Roman was taken aback by himself, amazed he could cause that much damage with only one swing.

"Woah!" Roman stepped back, dropping his sword in surprise—he heard it shatter as it hit the ground—as he rapidly turned around towards Neo. "Neo! Did you see that?!" he shouted, briefly overcome with a childish glee he hadn't felt in a decade and counting.

Turns out, Neo was taking a video of him to cherish. When he asked her, she gave him a thumbs up.

"Ha." Roman crossed his arms, triumphant. "Just make sure not to put that one in the blooper reel, 'kay?"

Neo neither nodded nor shook her head. Roman knew it was another one of her coy moments, having grown accustomed to them over the years.

Nevermind that, just the fact that he could now achieve the same feats as Adam meant that the floodgates had opened to a whole world of capabilities. He could be the hero or the villain, the comic relief or the determined, or anywhere in between. And for all his dislike of Semblances, effectively having access to every Semblance Neo had ever seen was far too good to leave on the table.

But for now, missing an eye really threw his depth perception off, and honestly, Roman could do without Adam's overly edgy appearance. He opened his mouth to ask Neo to undo the transformation, but then came up with an idea.

"Before you do anything, I'd like to try turning myself back," Roman stated.

Neo shrugged. Here goes! He tried to shed his current form for his original one. No luck. He tried two more times, assuming he must've done something wrong. Nada. Roman groaned in resignation with a facepalm. "I have to wait on you?" he said, watching her agree with similar disappointment.

He sighed. That would've been a great opportunity, he thought, starting to walk off somewhere with his hands behind his back and eyes closed. So I can't change myself to someone else. What about, say, teleporting?

As he took some steps forward as his mind wandered, he heard the familiar glass shards once more. The moment afterwards, he felt a leafy plant around his leg.

"Wh—" Roman opened his mouth upon discovering that he was not with Neo, but in a field of red plants and red trees. He was familiar with lush red vegetation. It wasn't that strange for a forest to be red instead of green; there was a reason Forever Fall was Forever Fall, after all.

But where was he? He was supposed to be with Neo, not in some rainy red forest he'd never seen before.

"Well then, what do we do now?" said a familiar voice.

Alarmed, Roman quickly hid behind a tree. Once he was certain he was hidden, he carefully peeked around the trunk for a better view of what was going on.

Little Red was sitting down on a log, staring at some dark-green sword, with Blake beside her. The Ice Queen was blabbering to herself, seemingly frustrated by the endless nonsense of this world. Finally, Firecracker was trying to speak to her team.

"We got my arm," Firecracker continued, "but we still don't have Crescent Rose or the slightest idea how to get out."

Her words went in one ear and out the other as the fact that he had just teleported finally dawned on him. Oh, that's right, Roman thought, on the verge of childlike joy taking over again, I can teleport. Oh, am I going to enjoy this.

"This way! Somebody's sad!"

Before he could think about his options once more, two men apparently acting as park rangers—well, emotionally charged park rangers—snapped him back to reality. Quietly, he scuttered off, thinking of returning to where he was when the same particles surrounded him.

Just like that, he was back. Wet and shaken, sure, but he was back. By now, though, the joy of his new abilities had worn off, replaced by uneasy questions.

Herein laid the questions: What if he had always been a walking illusion, conjured by Neo just to make herself feel less lonely? If so, had he neglected to explore his true capabilities all along?

Was he ever real?

Before he could plunge further into that spiraling train of thought, Neo waved her hand in front of his face, forcing him back into awareness. Now Roman could see that she was frowning, eyebrows raised and pointing up: he'd worried her.

But he knew exactly what to say. This place was weird enough as it was: two suns, technicolor flora, golden-beige atmosphere, and the fact that individual biomes were neatly separated by hexagonal acres.

"Hey," Roman began, "we're getting out of this place in one piece. Promise?" He extended his hand, for once not focused on the fact that Neo had changed his form—back to his usual looks.

Neo braced herself, took a deep breath, and then shook his hand.