Taylor, Lisa, Alec, and I met at the tea shop again.

"Are we finishing the territory claim today?" I asked, sipping on a delicious green tea.

"Exactly right," Lisa nodded. "Taylor, I want you to come with me. We're going to sweep through the streets for holdouts and your intel will be invaluable in choosing targets."

"And me?"

"At first I was going to have you infiltrate, but the resistance isn't as impressive as I thought it would be. Plenty are cutting ties and rejoining The Empire, so I don't think you'll be needed."

"Nishe. A day off, the besht kind of day," Alec slurred through a mouthful of cake.

"Not exactly," Lisa corrected. "We're claiming a lot of territory for two capes to manage. I know you have your clones, but I was hoping you could start keeping an eye out on individuals and start recruiting. I've got a pair of Tinkers, Chariot and Trainwreck, in my pocket, but both of them are Tinkers and are more interesting in providing the tech than using it to control territory. Speaking of, we'll be getting some teleportation platforms spread throughout our territory soon enough."

I considered it.

Inducting someone into the Akatsuki was a big thing to me. I considered the Damsel of Distress a while ago, but ultimately decided that just a potentially amazing power wasn't enough to warrant a position. Inducting someone into my new gang? Significantly less emotional attachment.

"How do you feel about the Damsel of Distress?"

"You mean that crazy bitch from Boston?" Regent asked.

"Yeah. Her power messes with her head and her body can't handle the force of the her blasts. She's probably a raging psychopath from the years of exposure, but Bonesaw can root around in her skull a bit and fix that... probably."

"That's definitely a human rights violation," Lisa considered, "but nobody would miss her, and she has demonstrated a desire to hold territory. What's a few more crimes?"

"That's the spirit," Regent chuckled.

I want to see Ashley Stilton's home address.

I knocked on the door of a cheap, run-down apartment in Stafford. Nobody responded. I knocked again.

For this trip, I kept my normal face with black hair and black eyes, but was dressed in a simple black hoodie and black sweatpants. I was relying on the people of Stafford to not pay attention to a random asian man, particularly considering I'd never been there before.

A gaunt and disheveled woman with dark circles under her eyes answered the door, glaring at me. "Who the hell are you and what do you want?"

I flicked on my Sharingan, suppressing her Corona entirely. Her own eyes wided and she jerked, flicking her wrist at me, only to freeze as no shotgun of warped space-time struck.

"I apologize for the precautions. I figured you'd do something like that."

Her mouth flopped open once, then twice, and then she tried to punch me. I held up a palm, catching the blow.

"Come on, now. No need to be so rude. This is a recruitment pitch, not a capture."

Stiltons paused. "Recruitment? The hell do you want from me!?"

"May I come in and have a seat?"

"Fuck! Fine."

She gave me another glare and turned around. I followed her into her apartment, scrunching my nose at an unidentifiable but slightly unpleasant smell. The place was a mess, scattered with trash. We reached the living room and I paused.

I sat in a plastic lawn chair as Ashley Stiltons sat on a cheap couch, still glaring at me.

"What did you want to say? Spit it out!" she sneered.

"I've recently began a takeover of a great deal of territory in Brockton Bay. I find myself looking for people to manage that territory as the local boss. I don't really care for leadership, outside of the benefits, so I'd rather offload the task. I can promise money, power, and a leadership position."

"Leadership?" Her greed was instantly obvious, leaking into her eyes and face. "What's the catch?"

"A few small things. First, you're insane. Like full-on bipolar depression and highly aggressive sociopathic tendencies. That's not exactly ideal for an effective working environment. Second, your powers are needlessly destructive and hard to control. If you are unaware, I have access to Bonesaw's full range of modifications, and since I'm not a psychotic twelve year old, we can channel that productively. You get some mental help and a tune up and you get to lord over a big chunk of land."

"...What's the catch?" She repeated, still not taking it at face value.

I paused. "Well, we might have to make you look Asian. The ABB was willing to tolerate bringing Hive into the fold because we already worked together, but if I start inducting random white women that might cause some problems? Haven't really considered that until now, to be honest. But that's it. I get less responsibility, you get a buff, some land, and some responsibility."

"How can I trust Bonesaw?" She still protested, but the greed was winning.

"I've got her under control. I've got no reason to trick you, If I wanted you under my control regardless of your opinion, I could have just kidnapped you the moment you looked me in the eyes. I prefer to be at least somewhat cordial to the people I plan to work with."

She went quiet. A brief skim of her body language gave me a bit of insight into her psychology, her instincts practically screaming at her to take any risk for a chance at domination over others.

"Fuck it, I'm in."

"Shake on it?" I offered my hand.

She rolled her eyes, reaching out and grasping my hand. I triggered the seal on my back, suddenly teleporting both of us into Bonesaw's lab. Ashley yelped as the scene changed, falling on her ass when her seat vanished. She scrambled up to her knees, only to freeze as a needle poked into her neck.

"Welcome to the lab!" Bonesaw cheerfully introduced herself as she emptied the fluid into her jugular vein, then removed the syringe. "We'll take good care of you, don't you worry!"

Ashley tried to stand all the way up, only to slip and fall back down as a sudden wave of dizziness overcame her. "This is… starting to feel… like a bad idea…"

"Don't be ridiculous, there's no bad intentions here," I waved off her worries. "Only optimal intentions. Don't worry, you'll be just fine."

She tried to stumble up again, only to fall flat on her face, unconsious.

"So, this is the one?" Bonesaw asked.

"Yep," I picked her up, placing her on the operating table. "I'm looking for three major operations. First is body reinforcement, make her able to withstand a hell of a beating. That's all you. Then we'll move to her psychology, removing unnecessary violent tendencies while leaving most of the personality intact. I'll get you a list of ailments. The final one will be her powers, I want you to make them more manageable. As it is she just blasts a cone of destruction, sometimes on purpose. Admittedly impressive, but not very precise."

"Body reinforcement is easy… Do you want artificial neurons?"

"No, I'd like to keep the option to subdue her at any moment."

"Alright, just the durability enhancements. Psychology is manageable, though it can be hard to predict the exact changes caused by brain surgery."

"I'll double check, like you said. We'll work in some loyalty too, I don't want to get backstabbed by someone who can turn me into human goo."

"Alright… Then the powers bit. I can probably rig it up into a more precise blast and add some specific triggers for activation. Maybe if you flick, or make finger guns!"

I snorted. "Finger guns would be hilarious, but could you just make it mentally triggered?"

"Will do, captain!" Bonesaw saluted.

"Oh, and she didn't say no to asian-ification. I assume that means she's fine with it?"

Two hours later, the operation concluded. Ashley Stiltons looked less like a gaunt, sleep-deprived ghoul and more like a healty woman of mostly Chinese decent.

"Ugh… water?" she croaked as she woke up, sedative slowly wearing off.

Bonesaw handed her a water bottle that she greedily drank from. The water refreshed her enough to open her eyes, her expression immediately screwing up in confusion as she recognized her hand had a completely different pigmentation.

"The fuck did you do to me!?"

"Didn't I say?" I calmly asked back.

"I thought you just meant like, makeup," she shook her head. "Whatever, that doesn't matter right now. What else did you do? Normally, I'd be thinking about turning you into a pile of meat... but..."

"Gutted most of your violent tendencies. You'll still be a rotten bitch when someone pisses you off, but it'll be a background task more often than not. Gave you some complementary subdermal reinforcements and organ shielding, some light power modification—"

"What did you do to my powers!?"

"Follow me," I reached out an arm and helped her to her feet. "I'll take you to target practice."

Ashley pointed her palm at my bone clone and focused. A distortion erupted from her hand, the recoil snapping her arm back. If it wasn't for the reinforcements we installed, her hand would be little more than crushed flesh and bone. Instead of spectacularly dislodging every joint in her arm, it merely whipped backward and flopped back into place in perfect condition.

The blast was an oddly beautiful swirl of distorted space, cruising forward at an impressive speed. The distortion punched right through the torso of my bone clone, violently re-arranging and almost instantly destroying it, cursing my Sharingan with a first-hand look at what I imagine putting a human torso through a blender would look like. Despite Bonesaw's hair modifications, Ashley's hair was still warped when she used her powers, stripping her hair down to a perfect white.

It was the sort of thing that could actually just kill me. I wonder if I can replicate a similar effect with space-time seals?

"Not bad at all," I commented. "I'd like you to get good enough to target limbs over the center mass before engaging in any actual fights, but having you on hand will be incredible for dealing with foes with high durability. Should be more than enough to convince the gang that you're worth listening to. You'll even match the gang colors if we get you something in red."

"No red," Ashley growled. "Black and white only."

I raised my hands in surrender. "Alright, monochrome it is. That's not my problem, anyway. Tattletale is the operations gal, she'll help you figure out a costume and integrate you into leadership."

"When are we meeting her?"

"Anytime, really. Actually, we may as well get it over with now."

I want to see the closest teleportation tag to Lisa.

I sent her off with a shadow clone, though she didn't know it was a shadow clone. That's been the real joy of a powerful chakra supply: completely offloading any boring work.

Public appearance to keep the gang in line? Plenty of chakra for a shadow clone to do that.

Run out of tea? A shadow clone can use Omoikane to make another supernaturally good batch.

Lingering eye or head pain? Thanks to shadow clones, I've regained a good deal of my chakra control. That means my clones are able to perform medical ninjutsu again, leaving my body in definitionally perfect condition at all times. Self-surgery is still a little out of my league, unfortunately.

I used Omoikane to target and eliminate every single health issue I could find, eliminating every minor issue and discovering a couple major ones.

The first was the natural genetic decay that came with aging, accelerated by my healing factor. That would take another round of Bonesaw's viral genetic rearrangement to fix, but I decided to put that off for a while. It won't become an issue for about thirty years, so I can wait till it's peaceful enough to take a short vacation.

That's right, Omoikane saw not having biological immortality as a flaw in my system. I decided to agree. Death has a funny way of reshuffling your priorities.

The other issue was bone cancer. Like, lots of bone cancer. Even more accelerated by my regeneration than aging, tumors and strange growths were occuring from my use of Dead Bone Pulse. So far it's all benign, but that's something that I would prefer to handle sooner rather than later.

My control wasn't enough to target the individual cancer cells and manual excision didn't sound very fun, so solving it with pure medical ninjutsu was out.

My solution was to develop my first bone release technique, and therefore my first Yang release jutsu. No hand signs needed, but I did specifically need Yang chakra to fuel it.

The technique completely regrew and replaced my entire skeleton, expelling the old skeleton out of my back. It's almost like a bug shedding its old exoskeleton, only, you know, my skeleton has to get through my skin. All the old cancer leaves with the old skeleton, leaving the new one free to inevitably develop more cancer, only to be ejected out like the last.

That wasn't much of a problem for me. Honestly, the strangest part of Dead Bone Pulse is how my flesh seems to simply open up as the bones leave my skin. Completely painless, though it does feel a little weird.

Taylor thought the skeleton replacement technique was the most horrifying thing she had ever seen. Bonesaw thought it had serious potential for Halloween decorations. Apparently, Halloween was the only major holiday celebrated by The Slaughterhouse Nine. I didn't want to imagine the tricks they played.

I called it the Spooky Scary Skeleton Jutsu.

I only needed to do it once a week at most, but it became somewhat habitual. The closest way to describe it is that feeling I get when you I pop my knuckles, only spread throughout my entire body.

As a result, I have a storage seal filled with a suspicious amount of human skeletons. Once the bones are out of my body I can't manipulate them, so I don't really know what to do with them. Maybe Bonesaw was right about the decorations idea?

I'm sure a shadow clone could figure that out for me. And just like that, I'm back to the original topic. Having all these shadow clones sure is convenient, but it does have an unfortunate side-effect: I'm bored as hell.

I want to see some interesting things to do.

Two visions flashed before me. The first, Alec playing video games back at his house. The second, four capes patrolling just outside of my territory. Triumph, Gallant, Glory Girl, and Panacea.

Alright, then. I'll go bother those four, and then I'll hang out with Alec.

Gallant was the first to notice me, immediately sensing the sudden appearance of another human's emotions on the roof just above them. He immediately stopped speaking, twisting his head around and staring me down.

"Well, what are the chances I run into you all here? So many people…" My grin was in perfect form, three tomoe staring down at the group.

The four heads turned up, conveiniently the only four people on the street. I specifically chose the most private part of their patrol to meet them on, to ensure they weren't pressured by the public. Vicky's aura was useless on me, a desperate and meek shadow utterly failing to twist my mind.

"Pain! What do you want?" Triumph demanded.

"Come on, Rory. Call me Indra. I'm on a first name basis with the PRT, right?"

"Don't play with us." Gallant tersely responded.

"Eh, gotta have fun where you can. Don't see why you can't play along."

"Don't give us that bullshit," Amy scowled. "You don't get to Master and insult me and then come back and act like we're best buddies."

"Oh, you've told them about our meeting then?" I looked her in the eye. "That's great to hear, Amelia. Have you been addressing all of the issues you've been dealing with?"

"You're asking her something on purpose," Gallant announced. "What are you trying to get to?"

I finished imperceptibly fishing the information out of her mind, using the conversation to bring her memories to the forefront. She hadn't told them about her attraction to her sister, but Dean knew about it and promised Amy he wouldn't tell anyone. Whether or not he followed through on that, I don't know.

Victoria didn't seem to be feeling any reservation toward her sister based on body language. Either she had no idea, or is extraordinarily open-minded.

"Stop trying to pretend to be friendly with us. We're not in your territory. If you don't have a message for us, then we're going," Galant stated.

"Just a short conversation then. I'm genuinely curious: What reasons do you have to dislike me? I understand that some people just don't get along, but I have only ever acted for the object and direct betterment of Brockton Bay. Even when I confronted Amy here, I only spoke the truth. Was I wrong to say she needed help? Was I wrong to remove Bonesaw as a threat?"

"The first time we met, I gave you the benefit of the doubt," Triumph began. "You acted to help my family, and so I trusted you, but I realized something was wrong the moment you turned in Hookwolf. You're the type of person who likes power; You love to know that you're in control. That kind of person can't be trusted. I can even see it now, with how you're trying to take over the conversation."

He sighed. "You aren't the kind of person to be friendly with. Once you took over ABB, it was clear. You may think you act for good, but you're not a moral person."

"I think you misinterpret my morals. I'm a simple person: I just want to live in peace, and to live well. Unfortunately, this is not a world of peace. This is a world at war, a struggle to fight, a constant tide sweeping you away. I want to live a good life, and part of living a good life is to have a good place to live, so I must change things. You know as well as I that you need power to change things. We both think in terms of morality, my definition is just a bit more… utilitarian than yours."

"How can you justify leading a gang?" Vicky seemed to be the only one who actually felt slightly conflicted about me.

"There's a lot of arguments I could give, such as the economic income boost some of my ventures will indirectly have on the area, or the virtual elimination of violent crime. That includes my own gang, they know I don't tolerate any violation of my rules. Well, after I make a few examples, of course. This is a cruel world, but I still want to make the most out of it. I'll leave you with one final request: stay vigilant. Watch how the city changes. You will see me make the world better."

I vanished in a burst of mist.

"Hm, rough break," Alec considered, glancing away from the movie. "But I wouldn't worry about it much, man. Can't win everyone over."

"It's not about winning people over, it's about…" I looked for an answer. "I guess I just want to know what I'm doing is justified. People questioning me isn't going to change my mind, but it does brew some uncertainty."

"Hey, for what it's worth, I think you're only somewhat a bad person."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, that's really inspiring…"

"Hey, I've got a lot of experience with bad people. If anyone knows what they're talking about: it's me. Take my sister," Alec gestured at the ceiling. "She's in the 'mostly bad' category. Willing to join The Nine and sell me out. You? You're just a little bad; You don't like to be challenged and you're willing to get your hands dirty. There's worse character flaws than that. And don't worry about being a little bad, man, you aren't going to be crucified for not acting like Jesus Christ himself."

"That's fair, though I'm more worried about not acting like a good leader than not acting like Jesus Christ."

"Ah, Lisa is handling most of that anyway. Let the busybodies stay busy. Hey, ask yourself this: Would you be fine living under your own horrible, devious, malignant, tyrannical reign?"

I blinked. "I had no clue you knew half of those words. But... yeah, I think so."

"Then keep it that way. Being a good leader isn't really definable, most 'great leaders' just got lucky and ended up in power at the right time and place. Keep the money coming in, keep things safe, and I think you'll do just fine. Oh, and I'm plenty smart, I just use it to take the piss outta people."

"How is the money situation, by the way?"

"Doing great," Regent gestured at the new, massive screen we were watching movies on. "Where do you think I got the TV? Lisa gave me it as a bonus for staying quiet during the Toybox deal."

I snorted. "'Bonus for staying quiet?' What an important job."

"Hey, if you're good at something, don't do it for free."

"You're good at staying quiet?"

"I'm good at staying quiet for money. Well, sometimes."

"Lisa's trained you well…" I shook my head. "Whatever, you want to come with me to pick up some chicken? I'm in a chicken mood right now."

"Yeah, I'm down. Show me your portal, magic man."

"Hey, Indra," Lisa's call interrupted the pirate movie. "We've almost excised Fenrir's Chosen from Brockton, there's one last holdout. Taylor's running low on knockouts, could you come by and clean it up?"

"I'll be right there," I ended the call, turning to Alec. "Gotta do some work real quick, I'll come back later."

Alec burped and gave me a wave. "I'll pause it. See you later."

I activated Lisa's teleportation tag, appearing at her location. Taylor and Ashley were there too, both looking tired.

"What's the situation?"

"Old office building, packed full of weapons and Nazis. Last major holdout with lieutenants and everyone they could give a gun."

"Point at it?"

Lisa pointed out of the window at the building. I want to see everyone in this building.

"I'll be right back."

I flickered to the side of the building, transforming my appearance to blend in with the wall I latched onto. I made my way to a window on the top floor and began to weave seals while molding Yin chakra, placing an illusion over the window that completely silenced it.

The window silently shattered as I punched through, then slid myself through the shattered window. I purposefully chose an empty room, though two people were on their way toward me. I transformed into a dragonfly and landed above the doorframe, waiting for the pair to enter.

The two opened the door and froze at the sight of the shattered window. They turned around and opened their mouths to yell. Before they could call for help I dropped down, flashed a few hand seals, and placed my hands on the back of their necks. My medical ninjutsu targeted their brainstem, forcibly knocking them out. I flickered through the top floor, targeting small groups.

The top floor only had one room I couldn't just tap people unconscious in without being detected. Too many people in one room, too many people with eye protection. Conveniently, this was also the room with access to the stairwell.

I extracted yin chakra and drew it into my hands, molding the seals for my knockout mist. I cracked open the door and stuck my seal arm's hand through, flooding the room with mist, then slammed it back shut and held it. There was a little commotion before the mist took effect and the sound of people starting to drop to the ground filled the room.

I flickered to the stairwell as the men on the floor below started to move toward it. More mist continued to spew from my arm as I leaped down to the bottom floor, completely filling the stairwell with a thick cover of knockout gas.

I didn't bother clearing the in-between floors. The only way down from the building is through the stairs or out the windows, so they're stuck. Well defended, certainly, but stuck. I'll be back to deal with them.

Gunfire rained down on me as I stepped out onto the ground floor. I didn't even bother with my Susanoo, instead I channeled chakra into my body, forming a thick layer of bone just beneath my skin. I continued to flicker between people, knocking them out with a single tap.

They caught on to the fact that gunfire didn't work on me pretty quick, escalating to throwing grenades. That actually made things a little difficult. My eyes are the only part of my body I still have to protect from this level of damage, so I could simply turn my head to ignore shrapnel.

The people on the ground aren't able to survive grenades, though. Their desperate comrades didn't care about collateral damage, throwing everything they could at me. I couldn't stop most of them from getting hurt, not that I really cared if they were, but when given the opportunity I used my body as a shield.

If they weren't trying and failing to kill me, they were running away. They realized the error of their ways when they got outside, faced with dozens of guns pointed at ever exit.

I finished up on the ground floor and went back, spawning a clone to deal with the rest of the floors. There was one exception: the floor I identified as the boss's floor. Not a cape, just whoever was left in power over the gang. I decided to clear that floor myself.

I blasted another thick mist throughout the floor, completely obscuring the sight of the footsoldiers set up to hold me off. I picked them off one by one, sending them into a panic. Some ran past me to the stairwell, failing to get far enough through the knockout mist to escape, and occasionally falling down the stairs as an unconsious blob.

I kicked down the door to the site leader and came face-to-face with about a dozen claymore mines. I snapped up my Susanoo ribcage as the explosives went off, demolishing the wall and sending me flying backward. I landed on my feet and darted through the remains of the drywall.

The nameless boss raised his gun to shoot me. I slapped the gun out of his hand. He pulled another gun out. I conjured my Susanoo arms.

I grabbed the boss with one hand and punched a hole in the wall with the other, then jumped out of the improvised window. I tossed him over to my gang where he landed with a thud and a skid, who quickly disarmed and bound him. I flickered away, and then teleported back to Lisa.

"Alright, I'm done. Well, mostly. Still a couple clones cleaning house. Anything else you need?"

Lisa shook her head. "Just leave a clone here to do some public speaking. I've got it written out, it's something to celebrate winning the war and introduce her," Lisa gestured to Ashley.

"Oh? You've got a new identity ready to go?"

"I do," Ashley responded.

"She's going to go by Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction," Lisa elaborated. "Once she realized that you've opened the gates on the deity names, she wanted to be a goddess of destruction."

"Indra is my actual name, though," I pointed out.

"I don't give a shit," Ashley eloquently responded. "Now somebody get me a dress and a mask. I want to see my new underlings."

I shrugged, created a shadow clone, and teleported back to Alec. She's their problem, now.

"Gang war is over? Hell yeah. Just you and The Empire now," Alec declared. "See? The 'take over the gang' idea was great. Look at the progress you've made."

"Yeah. Can't argue with progress, I guess. Though I admit I'm excited to get to The Empire."

"Oh, you're excited to get in a fight? That's new. What's different about The Empire?"

"Triggered because of The Empire. Shot my fucking 's a bit more to it, but they've significantly soured my perception on life. I've been waiting for this opportunity for a while, but being the big dogs around has made me wary."

"Those cunts. Keep an eye out though, there's probably going to be someone dumb enough to try and make a move into the city. Sharks smelling blood in the water, you know. Brockton's still enough of a shitheap to keep most gangs out, but someone will try. They always do."

"Fuckin' tell me about it. Armsmaster is just going to keep sending his cybernetics robots at me. I could probably kick him out of the city, but I don't want to deal with the fallout that would probably bring."

"Still trying to keep a low profile, huh?" Alec chuckled. "I think it's a little too late for that."

"I can try. My hope is that if I can maintain a hold on my territory while keeping conflict away from the PRT, they'll eventually decide I'm too dangerous and enough of a nonfactor to be worth directly starting a conflict with. Powerful gang lord is more acceptable than an unknown factor, at least to the financial backers. That's my thinking, at least."

"Not many people are too dangerous to try and avoid completely," Alec pointed out. "Even Lung had some conflict. You're talking about an S-class threat level. You think you're up there?"

"Not in raw power, I don't think. Well, I could probably start making sleeper agents and get that designation really quick, but I'm trying to avoid that option. My survivability is incredible and I've got a good bit of power, but I can't go around destroying cities. Not quickly, anyway."

"I don't think you're going to be getting your way, then. Unless you're a threat to human civilization, you're not going to get a ceasefire without pulling some mind control. Just how it is."

"I think I just need to prove I'm worthwhile. Show up to a few Endbringer fights and all that."

"Really? Fucking Endbringers? Didn't you just say that you're not on their level?"

"And that I have amazing survivability. I'll be able to teleport away at any moment."

"Hmm… It is getting close to early Endbringer season again…" Alec considered. "Even then, I don't know how safe that is. You'd have to have a strategy for that, at least?"

"You're right, I should plan that out."

I want to see who the next Endbringer will be.

My eyes filled up with chakra, prepared to cast the illusion, and then failed. Failed?

I want to see why I couldn't see what Endbringer will be next.

The tv shifted to a white background with words typed out:

The Endbringer network has an advanced anti-precognitive defenses.

That's a pain in the ass. I flashed a few signs to accelerate my regeneration, healing my eyes.

"Behemoth and Simurgh are the most likely to show up next." I muttered. "Simurgh would be my choice because she won't be able to predict me, but knowing my luck I'll get Behemoth."

"What's that?" Alec asked.

"Ah, nothing. Just thinking about the future. Sorry, let me zone out for a second."

I have no idea when the next attack will be, but if I'm not ready then I can just wait until the next one. I'll get started on developing some plans.

Weaponizing space-time seals has unfortunately not been very effective, as any seal able to produce a reasonable spacial distortion is too gargantuan to be effectively wielded in a fight. I can get some head-sized distortions on something big enough to cover a bone kunai's extended lower half, so it's not been a complete waste of time.

Still not particularly useful against an Endbringer. Not big enough to make it to the core on it's own, though with enough effor it might be enough to whack off a limb. My red orb might be able to get through a limb—Actually, let's figure that out.

I want to see what my orb would do to Leviathan's arm.

It managed to shred pretty deep, but did not remove the limb. Not bad, but not as good as the nanoblade I stole from Defiant, which wasn't enough in the first place. I'll have to work on that.

If it's Behemoth I won't be able to approach with the Nanoblade, and my orb will no doubt have very little effect. What could I come up that I could feasibly do to Behemoth?

It would need to be fast enough that he couldn't just zap it with lightning, powerful enough to get through his absurd defenses with enough visible damage to be considered a notable fighter, and feasible for me to perform.

Endbringers don't have a physiology I can manipulate with Genjutsu, so Yin release is most likely out. Yang is out for Behemoth, I don't want to get near enough for him to instantly fucking blow me up.

Seals have promise, but Behemoth could probably obliterate any seal I send at him. Water release is probably what I need to work with. It has the most direct offensive potential, I just need to figure out how to make the most out of the power I have.

The power I have…

I glanced at my water storage seal. Is there a way to use all of the water in it at once? Maybe a compression based attack? Probably not enough to hit a core, but maybe enough to fuck some things up. I'll workshop it and consider some other sealing options.

"Ok, I'm back to reality," I informed Alec. "Wanna order some more food and try this hallucinogenic mist I came up with?"

His eyebrow raised. "Of course I want to try it. Duh."