Gone were the dull concrete ruins of Musutafu's seemingly war-torn south side, as the thin-veil that separated reality vanished momentarily— transporting both you and Linkara into a world where few would ever see, and an ever fewer amount of people would ever leave. No longer were you standing in the middle of a forgotten construction project— no— instead of there being a massive slab of dirty asphalt beneath your fake Yeezys, there resided a massive wall of crimson-brown bricks that stood erect high above the infinite space that awaited for you down below. Truly, you were atop of the fourth wall, and instead of being surrounded by the same beautiful blue-sky that you were mostly familiar with, the space around you was covered in comic art style background— its bright orange hues that illuminated the brick-battlefield shining down on the wall you and Linkara stood on, as you stood across from him with only ten meters separating him from you.

The iron barrel of his 'magic gun' was still aimed at you— his hand he was using to grip its wooden flintlock handle extended outward— as he stared at you with contempt behind the shining lenses of his eyeglasses. "Well, well, well— what an unpleasant surprise this must be for you… I can't say that I'm all that happy to see you here under these circumstances. But… In the grand scheme of things, I suppose that really matters," Linkara said in his nasally voice, as you stood at the ready— the direness of the situation passing over you, as you began to get a hold of your senses.

"Wherefore art thee h're, Lightbringer?!" You demanded in your best Shakespearean voice— conveying your confusion as to why Linkara had come to you, and what purpose did he have to summon you to the metaphysical world that only a handful of enlightened ones would ever get to see.

Rolling his eyes at you, Linkara kept the barrel of his magic gun locked onto your center of mass as reached into the pocket of his brown jacket to pull out an enclosed gray device. "Take a look at this tricoder, and tell me what the problem is here," the fedora-wearing man instructed, before craning his arm back and tossing the small rectangular device over to you— completely missing you, and accidentally throwing off of the side of the brick wall, and into the white abstract abyss below. "My mistake! Not to worry though— my inventory is filled almost entirely with tricoders!" Linkara shouted at you, before reaching into the same pocket to pull out another enclosed handheld device.

Credit where it was due, Linkara almost managed to hit his mark with his second throw; had it not been for your stupendous hand-eye coordination when you caught it midair, the second tricorder would have shared the same fate as the first one. Having had to get close to ledge of the brick wall, you cautiously made your way back to safety to its spacious middle section while popping open the device's clam-shell chassis— revealing one small monitor inside of the tricorder on its top half, while the bottom half had several dull-yellow buttons on it.

Although the design of the device in your hand was quite outdated in its own merit, you were able to lean in close enough to read the photon-particle measurements that Linkara had presumably recorded while he was in the physical world. To the common everyday, the single-photon readings and spiked wave functions displayed on the colorless screen of the tricorder would have been unreadable— mostly because of how fucking small the screen was. But you had enough experience with quantum mechanics to make out the low-quality graphics to understand the message that Linkara was conveying to you, and that message was simple.

You done goofed, and subsequently had made a fucky-wucky.

Pocketing the piece of outdated and somehow-still-futuristic-at-the-same-time technology into the side pocket of your gray slacks, you essentially stole from Linkara right in front of his face, with his magic gun still aimed at your heart— you absolute mad lad. "The anomalous spikes of photonic energy you've been responsible for creating have been sending a ripple effect throughout the space-time continuum— causing the veil between the metaphysical world and our own to blur, whenever your quirk interferes with the quantum-flow of light…"

"… But you knew that already— and yet you persist to use your quirk, even when you've been warned of the consequences," Linkara finished saying with a coldness in his voice, as he cocked the iron hammer back on his flintlock pistol— his eyes locked onto yours, as you used the crimson crest that was engraved on the back of your right hand begin emitting your own limited supply of photon particles into the area. "There's nothing left for you in this world, Ren— no amends to be made, no closure for you, and definitely no happy ending that is waiting for you… You need to let go of it," he said with a heartfelt tone emerging in his cold voice— the almost pleading look behind his stare seemingly begging for you to listen to him, as though he were trying to have a heart-to-heart with you.

But even if that were true, it didn't matter to you. Silence fell upon the tension that resided between you and him, and when it came time for you to finally respond to his last attempt at peacefully solving things, all that escaped from your mouth was a saddened and soft laughter. Smiling apologetically at him as you let out a calming sigh, you looked Linkara straight in the eye as you told him, "I… I can't do that."

You heard the fedora-wearing man letting out a heavy sigh as he momentarily closed his eyelids with disappointment written all over his beardless face. "… I know," was all Linkara had left to say to you, before pulling the iron trigger on his flintlock. You could have sworn you just heard sick-ass boss music beginning to play from all around you, as you used your reinforced reflexes and physical prowess to bend sideways from the first initial blast of blinding light that exploded out from the barrel of Linkara's magic gun.

With how powerful the recoil of his magic gun was, Linkara needed only a second to readjust his aim on you before firing another blast of high-powered energy from the barrel of his firearm— giving you barely enough time to create infused to bricks on the floor in front of you with your photon particles, in order to create a wall of metaphysical matter between you and the incoming particles of volatile magic. Knowing better than to trust anything that comes out of atop of the fourth wall, you quickly propped yourself up on a singular hand— positioning yourself into a handstand, before resting a blast of concentrated air from your palm, that sent you propelling up past your raised part of the brick battlefield.

Having no time to pay any mind to the loud-thunderous crack of the bricks beneath you blowing away almost immediately after being hit directly from Linkara's energy shot, you used your sharp wits to calculate the exact force needed to propel yourself upright— being still in mid-air for less than a nano-second, before being forced to use even more of your photon particles to air-strafe just in time to avoid being hit with another one Linkara's blast of light. With you being on the defense as you were, you knew that it was only a matter of time until you completely exhausted your body's supply of stored photon particles— and from how Linkara was attempting to engage in combat with you from afar, you knew that he was more than aware of your limitations as well.

Trying your best to reserve your dwindling supply of light particles, you quickly constructed the formula necessary to transfer photon particles into physical objects— manifesting a fine dust of photon-crystals from within you, before firing the scattershot of light directly back at Linkara, as you air-dashed past his forth blast of white-cyan energy and directly toward him like an incoming meteorite.

With how overweight the fedora-wearing man was, one would rightfully presume that his movements would be nothing short of lackluster— and oh how you wished that was the case. Although he had no quirk to speak of, Linkara's ability to run in place dramatically to move from one location to another was unrivaled— something that you were reminded of, after you saw him disappear from the spot where he had taken the stance to begin with. With your volley of photon-dust tearing apart surface of the fourth wall into a fine-powder itself, you created a blast of air exhaust underneath you— blowing away the debris in the air while launching yourself upward, where you narrowly avoided getting your feet vaporized by the the blast of energy that Linkara fired several meters behind where you were.

"That's not the ninja WAY," you shouted out loud with manic-energy flowing within your body, as you spun around and tossed several sharpened photon-crystals that you had made with your back turned toward Linkara directly at him— air dashing backwards in the air, and forcing him to duck-and-roll forward along the brick-laid battlefield.

"I cannot abide by your madness, Ren! You're exactly the reason why what dies should always stay dead!" Linkara shouted back in the form of a battle-cry, before standing up from the ground to aim the barrel of his magic gun up towards the orange comic-backdrop sky above. In rapid successions, you watched as the comic-book reviewer fired nine shots into the air— the blinding white orbs that exploded out from his magic gun floated above him, before immediately beginning to home in on you like guided-missiles.

You had just made a fatal flaw in your previous judgment, as your air-dash maneuver left you still strafing directly towards where Linkara was, and where the nine homing projectiles were propelling themselves straight for you. "Aw, SHIT!" You shouted in a panic, with literally microseconds left before you would be hit point-blank with whatever magic-infusions were stored within the nine-incoming missiles. From the corner of your eye, you could see Linkara taking aim at where you were he figured you were going to try to air-dash to, as to avoid buying yourself more time to strategize against the trap he had ensnared you in.

You couldn't survive tanking nine magic missiles at once, but you could perhaps survive one and still be capable of fighting onward. With no time to waste, you timed the first ball of light that was heading straight for you, and managed to offer it your left forearm just as you used an ample supply of your photonic particles to create a massive shield of photon-crystals between the gap of the first missile, and the second missile— surprising Linkara, and baiting him into blindly firing into a explosive or crystal fragments that obscured the area in the air where the shield had shattered.

Thinking that you would fall straight onto the wall— or perhaps even more hopefully you would fall past the top of the wall, and be annihilated by the infinite void where his battlefield stood erect from— Linkara retreated away from where he had been standing, all while firing more and more homing missiles behind him. What he wasn't expecting though was that he had reacted the same exact way that you had been anticipating.

"Review THIS, Lightbringer!" You shouted manically with an ear-to-ear grin plastered across your face, as you air-dashed backwards away from the incoming missiles— using even more of your limited supply of photon particles to create a chain-reaction within the molecules of the bricks that resided along to the top few layers of the wall Linkara was still on that had caused a meta-atomic explosion that blew the top of it sky-high.

Not only had your borderline-suicidal counterattack manage to create a disruptive wave of gamma energy that caused Linkara's volley of homing orbs to explode in on themselves, but the fallout of debris itself had created a temporary cease-fire that allowed for your broken body to fall straight down onto what was left of the uneven layer of the brick-battlefield. Catching your breath while face down against the unforgiving foundation that was left in the wake of your tampering of the metaphysical construct beneath you, you eventually were able to reconstruct your body using almost the entirety of photon particles you had within you.

Once your eardrums had grown back, it was then that you heard something in the far distance cacophony of engines humming— the smell of hydrogen burning in the air infiltrating your healed nostrils, as you picked yourself up from the broken-brick ground. Just as you had feared, hovering hundreds of meters away from where you and the crumbled wall remained was Linkara's flying fortress itself: the Comicron-Two, in all of its dark-gray chassis-glory.

Hearing the distant crackles of the starship's speakers coming to life, you put one hand on the back of your re-created neck to pop the tip of your spine back into place, and began coming up with a list of possible strategies for you to utilize against Linkara, as he prepared to speak to you directly from within the safety of his starship's bridge.

"Look at yourself, Ren— look at the monster you've become. Blackened eyes, white pupils, and a body that's constantly on the verge of disintegration— everything about you is screaming for the sweet release of death. You don't deserve this fate, Ren; no one does… No amount of make-up or bandages can't hide that fact: not from me, not from you, not from All For One," Linkara said with sympathy in his voice, as you noticed from where you were standing the way he the Comicron-Two's front cannons were shifting to take aim at you.

From what you could calculate, there was a chance you could ride the blast of his ion-cannons that he surely was going to use to blow the remainder of the fourth wall from beneath your feet— not unscathed, however, as you simply didn't have enough photon particles left inside of you to reinforce the entirety of your body.

Your legs would simply have to go.

It wasn't like you could bleed out, after all.

"... You lost your fancy little pirate's gun in that blast, didn't you Lightbringer? That's why you're resorting to destroying your own slice of the metaphysical world," you finally uttered out with a sinister tone in your voice, as you made yourself hyper-alert of the first sign of when Linkara was going to fire his ship's cannons at you. "And you don't seem to understand… What a shame— you seem like an honest man. Exploring the stars and what may lie beyond— giving it your all to save humanity from the threats that the majority of the population wouldn't ever be able to even begin to comprehend…"

"... You're an unsung hero, Lightbringer; the brightest light to ever shine within the sea of darkness… And yet, not a single tear shall be shed for you when you're gone," you said hauntingly with an ominous tone in your voice— your eerie smile once again forming across your purple face, as your glowing-white pupils concentrated on the way Linkara's cannons were beginning to vibrate from the volatile ion-energy that his ship's plasma-generator was charging up to fire from.

"... I wish I could say that you're a good man, Ren. But you never were, and now isn't an exception either, it would seem… Goodbye, old nemesis," you heard Linkara say in an almost smug voice, before using the last of your photon energy to reinforce your body from the knees up just enough to survive the initial blast of the Comicron's twin ion-cannons, as they blew the entirety of the fourth wall with two powerful blasts that were capable of easily leveling out an entire planet.

Engulfed in an intense fire created from the plasma of the air around you, you took toward the sky like a shooting star— the light of your incoming body burning your purple flesh catching Linkara's attention, and redirecting his ship's sensors away from the incoming flurry of photon crystals that you had made when the house-sized white-and-cyan shots of the Comicron-Two's canon collided with what remained of the fedora-wearing man's once-mighty wall.

"WARNING: DAMAGE DETECTED IN SHIP'S CANNONS. ADDITIONAL DAMAGE DETECTED IN HYDROGEN-THRUSTER: STARBOARD WING. REDIRECTING POWER FROM ENGINES TO PORTSIDE-THRUSTERS. SHIELDS OFFLIN- WARNING, WARNING: BREACH IN CENTER BRIDGE DETECTED— ACTIVATING EMERGENCY ESCAPE PLAN IN T-MINUS TEN SECONDS," you heard the ship's automated response system speak through its entire amplified sound-system— the ramshack scattershot you had created in the last second of the explosion having successfully hit their targets, and activated the fail-safe system that prevented the ship from moving or firing at your body in-time to prevent you from boarding its bridge.

Although Linkara was able to dodge your reinforced body as you flew straight through his captain's chair, he along with you were pumped full of glass shards from how hard you had flown straight through the bridge's glass windshield. Unlike you though, Linkara was chalk full of blood, and could still feel pain. Having used the last of your body's stored photon particles, you once again sacrificed what was left of you by digging your fingertips into the white steel-plated deck of the bridge— catching yourself in time to prevent getting splattered against the wall, at the cost of your left fingers.

Left with only stubs for fingers on your damaged hand and nothing left underneath your torn knees, you truly embodied the spirit of the unrelenting zombie that Linkara had made you out to be during his speech. Hopping forward and using your powerful muscles within your right arm, you dragged your broken body across the glass-covered deck— closing the distance between you and the injured comic-book reviewer.

"TEN… NINE… EIGHT… SEVEN…"

Attempting to buy himself precious seconds of time as the ship's announcer continued to count down the time it would take for it to teleport away into another different dimension of the metaphysical realm, Linkara winced in agony as he raised his bleeding arm up to grab a hold of his the brim of his fedora— tossing it at your face, as you climb over his lower half, while he tried desperately to kick you off of him.

"SIX… FIVE… FOUR… THREE…"

"YOU SHOULD HAVE STUCK TO REVIEWING SHITTY COMICS, LIGHTBRINGER!" You cackled madly with a terrifying expression on your smiling face— your blackened eyes widened with malice, as you used your superior strength to grab a hold of his upper thigh; breaking his femur and causing him to drop the metallic tool he had tried pulling out of his torn jacket to protect himself with.

This is it. You were going to kill him. After all these years of him meddling with your plans— preventing you from escaping that hellhole you came to know as 'Florida'— you were finally going to settle the score. With him being seemingly defenseless, you quickly crawled up past his broken leg to get onto his pudgy torso— your one-good remaining hand reaching up to grab him by his throat, as you prepared yourself to rip his throat out in one pull.

"TWO… ONE-"

"-I AM A MAAAAANNNNNN!" You heard Linkara screamed definitely with righteous fury behind his nasally voice— his eyes widened with a mixture of fear and anger behind his glasses, as you looked up past his screaming expression to see his fist cocked back as far as his arm could extend.

Before you felt the might of Linkara's dimensional-breaking fist colliding straight into your ghastly face, you managed to catch a glimpse of all the breath-taking hues of blues and white that engulfed the outside of the Comicron-Two, through its front windshield that your body had shattered into more than a million pieces. The iridescent beauty that gently shined its light into the breached bridge of the starship brought with a sense of tranquility and joy— sparking genuine happiness that you hadn't felt in decades.

And then you got the knocked the fuck out by the guy who apparently had the hots for the green M&M.