Ai's appearance in Borgin's shop was quiet and unnoticeable, so as not to attract the attention of customers, if there were any at all. It would be weird if a child appeared in the middle of the shop and, as if nothing had happened, went to talk to the owner like an old friend.
The cyborg on steroids teleported to the dark part of the shop, and only when he made sure there were no prying eyes did he allow himself to step out of the shadows. In his mouth, Ai held the very same pipe he had bought in this same shop two years ago, quietly puffing ring-shaped clouds of smoke.
Walking through the entire shop, glancing slightly at the completely unchanged shelves with goods, he stood right in front of the seller's counter and, raising his fist, knocked three times on the wooden table, producing a loud but surprisingly pleasant sound. Putting his hand behind his back, hiding the pipe in the process, Ai began to wait.
After about half a minute, Borgin came out of the shop's back room, muttering something nonsensical under his breath. Ai pretended not to hear his quiet insults directed at him and continued to stand as if nothing had happened. The sword was still at the ready and emitted a little light, being in the semi-darkness of the shop.
Finally, Borgin approached the counter and looked at his next customer. And so he remained rooted to the spot, unable to believe his no longer very young eyes. It's not every day you meet someone who disappeared a couple of years ago and then suddenly decided to return. But the old shopkeeper wasn't that simple.
Just as he was about to cast a binding spell on the newcomer, a huge golden cube landed on the counter. 30 by 30 by 30 centimeters of pure gold. From such weight, the table beneath it simply turned into splinters, and the golden cube fell to the floor, breaking through that as well. The crash was insane.
Borgin remained standing with his wand raised and his mouth open. The magical pressure that had increased for a second immediately disappeared, and Borgin slowly lowered his eyes to the huge gold cube on his desk... already in the floor. The shop owner exhaled tiredly and lifted the sleeve of his left arm, revealing a wand holster, where he hid his weapon. Adjusting his sleeve, he looked at Ai again and simply began to wait.
"Missed me?" asked the Nano-swarm pretending to be an eight-year-old boy. This whole situation brought him unforgettable pleasure, and him alone. Borgin wasn't particularly happy about someone who suddenly burst into his shop. Just as abruptly as he disappeared, he returned. And what his supplier had been doing all these two years - history is silent. At least to him.
"Where have you been, Mr. Elliot? Your sudden disappearance broke the gold sales. Most people broke their contracts with me. I lost a lot of money." Borgin tried to speak calmly, because he knew that fighting this "boy" was a lost cause. And the fact that instead of fighting he created a huge golden cube spoke of his increased power.
"Oh, Borgin, Borgin. Don't be a bore. You have much more money now than before you met me." Ai pulled up a tall stool and sat on it, which saved him the need to stand on his tiptoes.
"And I even know how to multiply it. Did you think I was just fooling around all these two years?" The boy smirked and waved his hand over the small remnant of the table that remained standing despite all the damage it had taken. A dozen black rings with bright green runic interlacing immediately appeared on the surface. Borgin was bewildered, looking at these seemingly mere trinkets, while Ai, on the contrary, was smiling like a total maniac. But something didn't please him.
"No. Too many," he said and halved the number of rings. Instead of a dozen, only five remained.
"And what is this?" Borgin asked, hiding his impatience. The very fact that Ai decided to sell not ten pieces, but five, saying that a dozen was too many, meant that these rings had far from ordinary enchantments.
"I'll demonstrate," replied the Voidwalker, not even turning his head toward his interlocutor. In one moment, he extended his hand towards the back room behind Borgin, and a few moments later, a random wand flew into his palm. Ai found it using magical sense.
Taking one of the rings lying on the table, he put it on his index finger and pointed the wand at his temple. Borgin suspected something clearly wrong, and before he could even shout, as...
"Avada Kedavra!" a green flash illuminated the entire shop. The beam didn't even have time to touch the Voidwalker's synthetic skin before it was immediately sucked into the ring, like smoke in a car on rewind. Ai remained standing in place. Unharmed. He watched with delight as Borgin's face managed to change several colors, from sickly pale to purple. Towards the end, he turned pale again.
"Y-you..."
"Yes, my dear colleague, I am more alive than the living. I advise you to find some underground meeting, preferably high society, and get invitations for both of us. I will be selling these rings." Ai spoke while examining his hand with the ring on his finger, as if it were a normal Tuesday for him. And yes, all this was happening on a Tuesday. Finally, he tore his eyes away from the ring and took it off. Placing it back on the remains of the tabletop, he smiled radiantly again.
"Moneybags will snatch them up like hotcakes. They will even ignore the price of thirty thousand Galleons. Their skins are more important to them than any money, Voldemort proved this fact." Ai waved his hand, and all the rings went into the nearest spatial pocket. Borgin didn't look any rosier after Ai's words. Quite the opposite—he started to tremble.
"B-b-but... Au-u..."
"Don't worry about the Aurors. Did you think I was such an idiot to just throw around the Killing Curse for no reason?" The Voidwalker looked at Borgin with outright offense in his eyes.
"Do you think I trained for nothing? Sigh... They don't appreciate me here." He theatrically turned away and wiped a non-existent tear from the corner of his eye. It wasn't offensive to him; he simply didn't like it when someone pointed out what he had already thought through a thousand times over.
"Anyway, you understood my task, right?" In response, Ai received a hesitant nod, but that was enough for him.
"Excellent, I expect results within three weeks. If you need funding, let me know... Although you're unlikely to need it." Ai glanced at the large golden cube, which was still lying in the rubble of the table. To Borgin's surprise, his supplier didn't take a single Knut for this cube, but remembering the incident from two minutes ago, the man gave up further thought.
"U-uh... And how do I contact you, Mr. Elliot?" For the first second, the shop owner's voice trembled slightly, but a moment later returned to its normal business tone, as if nothing had happened. No Avadas, no cubes.
"That's what you should have started with!" Ai, who was already about to leave, stopped abruptly with one foot raised and turned around, looking at Borgin with a spark. Clenching his hand into a fist, he pretended to try and punch the air. Pretended. Because to Borgin's surprise, his hand went through space, opening a small purple rift, and came out with some strange green box, which Ai immediately threw to the man.
"Now that's definitely it, figure it out yourself. It's called a 'Walkie-talkie'." And refusing to continue the conversation, Ai simply disappeared, leaving behind only white sparks, destruction, a huge golden cube, and an increased risk of stroke for Borgin.
Along with him, the oppressive atmosphere also disappeared, which had prevented the Avada from being noticed.
۞⦰۞
Right after teleporting from the shop to his home, Ai wasted no time and ran to the basement, lying down on the cold floor, which strongly contrasted with the surrounding warmth. The silence, after the crash caused in the shop, seemed almost deafening. The imperceptible smell of ozone remained in the nano-swarm's memory.
Borgin was just a tool to him, one that did its job properly. And will continue to do so, based on Ai's calculations. The tool will not become unusable because it has nothing to blunt against. The conditions are too perfect for him... Synthetic.
But Ai didn't come to the basement for empty musings about his currently only subordinate.
"It's a good thing Occlumency is a full-fledged mental architecture, and not shields... I don't want to imagine how much time I would have spent entering my subconscious." Ai wanted to go there to find out some details about magical theory from the Clone, which could help him with further development of magic, because right now his knowledge and abilities were severely limited.
The Voidwalker closed his eyes and concentrated; just a second of being in a state of meditation was enough for the outside world to dissolve, leaving instead only the void of infinite internal memory. Glancing once more at the only two folders, Ai shook his head and, with another mental push, moved directly into the subconscious, ending up straight in the forest instead of the picturesque cliff.
Out of habit, he already started looking for his clone with his eyes, slowly scanning practically all the trees, all the bushes, and grass in Ai's vicinity. But to his own surprise, he found no one. The place where the clone used to sit was empty. There was no rocking chair, and the flattened grass had returned to its original state. As if no one had ever lived here. Or...
Ai simply didn't have time to finish the thought. A moment later, he was hit as if by a train, flying back several dozen meters and breaking through more than a dozen trees with his body. Somehow landing on his feet, Ai quickly got into a fighting stance, preparing to parry the next attack. He didn't notice how blood began to flow from his mouth and nose, and the point of impact hurt badly. As soon as the sense of danger dulled, the Voidwalker felt all the pain from the blow.
Returning to reality, he spat out a clot of blood from his mouth and began to wait for his opponent; it didn't take long. Almost immediately, the Clone appeared in front of Ai and delivered another rather lazy blow, which, nevertheless, sent Ai flying to crash his poor carcass through several dozen more trees.
The Nano-swarm was able to brake again.
"What are you doing, moron?!" he exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger towards the Clone, who seemingly didn't hear his overseer's question.
"Have you completely lost your mind?!" There was no answer to either of these questions.
Instead of an answer came another attack, which Ai finally managed to dodge, launching a counter punch right into his opponent's jaw... Only to get a metallic clang and pain in his arm instead of a hit. The Clone, looking at this attempt, smiled and grabbed Ai by the shoulder. With a sharp movement, he tore off the entire arm along with a piece of the shoulder and sent it flying far away, while Ai fell to his knees in pain.
The massive bloody wound pulsated with every beat of the exit of the red, expensive liquid that once supported life in this body.
"I'm doing what I've always wanted. Control." the Clone finally answered. And so Ai quickly connected all the dots, simply smiling. He stood up to his full height, as if not noticing the missing body part. His blood-covered face expressed only endless amusement.
"So that's... what you... Solvers are like... Heh-heh..." he wheezed, raising his trembling eyes to his would-be killer. Despite his complete physical detachment, his intellect still allowed him to guess who Ai had been talking to all this time.
"Always... demanding control... What a pity..." Ai lowered his eyes again and fell silent. The Clone/Solver was already running out of patience.
— What do you mean? — the Solver asked, forcefully lifting Ai's head so the latter was looking straight at him. The Voidwalker's smile from everything happening only grew wider and wider. They could have stood like this for an eternity. To see who would give up first, but Ai decided to answer:
"I won't give you control... This is my head." With each phrase, Ai's voice became more alive, sharper, as if something terrible was approaching, something even the Solver himself could fear.
"Therefore... Vulnera Sanentur." After these words, an endless stream of magic literally burst out of the Voidwalker, aimed entirely at restoring his body. Since this was the subconscious, to regenerate, he simply had to convince himself that by overcharging a basic healing spell with magic, he could restore a limb. Which Ai did.
His arm passed through several stages of regeneration in a second. It was both bones and muscles. But in the end, it became a normal arm again. While the Solver stood in a stupor, Ai twitched the fingers on his new hand a couple of times, clenched it into a fist, and immediately attacked.
"Reducto!" he shouted, combining the force of the punch with a weak blasting curse, which he also overcharged with magic. The effect was instantaneous. The punch generated a shockwave that stripped all the needles and leaves off the surrounding trees and bushes. The ground cracked, and the Solver himself flew away from the battlefield at tremendous speed, crashing his back through hundreds of trees.
But for Ai, this blow didn't pass without consequences either—his arm again turned into a piece of meat... which immediately regenerated.
Meanwhile, the Solver grew massive claws out of his back and used them to brake against the ground, leaving four deep furrows not only from the claws but from his feet as well. Stretching out to his full height, he wiped a trickle of blood flowing from his mouth and peered into the distance, trying to see Ai's position two kilometers away.
He managed this without much trouble. Realizing that Ai wasn't paying much attention to him, he smiled, and with a wave of his hand, forced his energy into motion, manifesting three arrows of different colors at the tips of three fingers: red, purple, and yellow with a central white hexagon. The Solver activated his Solver.
Waving his hand, he forced massive chunks of earth to detach from everything holding them, tearing roots and crushing rocks, and with a second wave sent them straight at Ai, who was simply losing his mind over everything happening.
Hesitating for an extra femtosecond, he clenched his hand, causing his trusty sword to appear in it, still glowing from the nanite acid passing through it. A moment later, he sprang into action. Delivering a vertical swing, Ai cleaved the first incoming boulder, enhancing his sword with a magic-overcharged Seco.
Instead of moving in his physical form, the Voidwalker engaged combat Apparition and dodged all the other boulders, appearing right in front of the Solver, who seemed to have been waiting for just this moment.
The Solver, having created his own sword, went on the attack, blocking the strike of Ai's sword. Hundreds of sparks rained down on the cratered earth. Jerking his wrist, the Clone twisted and managed to deflect the Voidwalker's weapon, only to leave a massive bloody slash crossing diagonally across Ai's entire body with his next swing. The two halves quickly fell apart, spilling internal organs outward and drenching the ground in blood.
The Clone, looking at this picture, snorted something nonsensical and even tried to start moving, only to be thrown back the next second by a massive explosion that ripped hundreds of trees from the ground and left a giant two-hundred-meter crater. In the center of this crater, Ai's body was slowly restoring itself. Bloody tendrils stitched both halves of his body together.
The Solver decided not to wait until the enemy gained full control. Brushing off the pain, the Clone appeared right in front of Ai; he created a singularity in his hands and slammed it into the Voidwalker's stomach, directing the entire force of the attack upwards. The shockwave turned the already deep crater into a full-fledged canyon, and the shreds of Ai's body scattered for kilometers, burning from friction with the air.
All the limbs, all the pieces of meat that flew off Ai quickly joined back together, restoring the body's original state. And during this regeneration, Ai was already planning his next moves. His thoughts quickly stopped on one idea that might work; he took into account that inside his head, everything mostly works like in the real world, so he decided not to hold back.
The freshly pieced-together body began its free fall from a height of four thousand meters. With every second, the speed of the free fall became greater and greater, until it reached the absolute maximum, two hundred kilometers per hour. After another thirty seconds of flight, Ai began to aim, preparing his next attack. The Clone suspected something was wrong from afar, from the ground, watching the Voidwalker extend his hand towards him. But he didn't have time to take any action.
"Incendio!" As soon as this seemingly harmless spell sounded, the entire inner world seemed to quiet down, to stop. The trees that remained standing stopped rustling, swaying, showing signs of life. The grass seemed to wither, becoming grayer...
These were only the first moments of what happened. After these negligible moments, the entire inner world was illuminated by a blindingly bright orange flame, which slammed into the earth like a divine fist, turning hundreds, if not thousands of square kilometers of space into ash. Mountains melted; not even dust remained of trees and other plants. Many bodies of water simply evaporated.
And at the epicenter of all this stood the Solver, breathing heavily. He stoically ignored the lack of oxygen, which had been burned away by this "harmless" spell. His body heated up to insane temperatures, rivaling the surface of the sun.
Ai, meanwhile, continued his fall, while his skin literally boiled from the incredible temperatures surrounding him. The closer he flew to the ground, the harder the burnt crust all over his body became.
But despite all the damage taken, Ai still managed to raise his hand and deliver one more blow to the Solver upon landing. The soil within a one-kilometer radius literally exploded, releasing a huge cloud of dust and dirt. But to the attacker's misfortune, this did not lead to the desired result. The Solver lowered his palm, which held the fist of the ember-man, who couldn't even see, since the fluid in his eyes had evaporated.
The Clone smirked, and with a sharp motion of his free hand, tore Ai's jaw off and mangled the rest of his head. With a kick, the Solver sent his opponent flying miles back, finally turning his bones into splinters.
Ai crashed through a mountain with his back, sending cracks and earthquakes across the entire archipelago, and almost immediately afterward slammed into the ground with force. Before he could even recover, the Solver appeared next to him and with a kick drove the poor melted little body into the ground, before delivering another blow.
The Clone once again used a singularity but intentionally decided not to tear Ai to pieces. If the living program cannot win by destroying the opponent's body, then why not exhaust him.
The singularity strike wiped out a significant part of the forest belt and the mountain archipelago, while Ai burned not only from his own spell but also from atmospheric friction. He didn't even have time to land before the Solver appeared next to him again, already above him, and delivered another blow, sending the pseudo-drone into the ground, only to immediately knock him out of it and send him flying again.
Even if Ai still had eardrums, he wouldn't have heard anything anyway. For total Armageddon, it was too quiet here. His body wasn't regenerating, not because Ai didn't want it to, but because he simply couldn't. The mental pain felt completely real: his consciousness clouded, his thoughts raced back and forth. The subconscious is exactly the world where Ai didn't have his computing power, and with it... the power to command everything.
The Solver detached from the ground and flew almost a kilometer upwards. His gaze slowly swept over the entire battlefield, observing the destruction, the death of innocent plants, and almost complete annihilation. Shaking his head, the Solver extended his hand toward Ai and snapped his fingers. A moment later, a small black hole appeared next to the Voidwalker, which almost immediately turned this already badly mangled piece of the planet into crumbs.
Ai, still missing his jaw and with an open skull in which the remnants of his brain could be seen, felt the force of the black hole the moment it appeared. All his charred skin was torn from his body, ripping burned nerve endings and breaking bones. The remnants of his eyes left their sockets, and right after them, his head, barely held by scraps of his spine, was pulled into the abyss.
And the Solver's plan might have worked, if not for one big "BUT". Although this piece of the planet was created by the Clone's will, a part of the space still belonged to Ai, and the latter took advantage of it. His head and spine instantly retracted into his torso, and his skin literally stretched over bare muscles, turning the incomprehensible lump of meat into a quite distinct humanoid figure.
Ai didn't even have to open his eyes; he felt everything happening within a radius of hundreds of kilometers. This space belonged to him, it was his home. Instead of resisting the black hole, he, on the contrary, allowed it to start pulling him in, slowly turning his body into mush. But instead of spaghettification and subsequent death, which did not align with the Voidwalker's plans, Ai came up with something much bigger. As soon as his body was as close to the hole as possible, he managed to dive out of the gravitational storm and perform... A gravitational slingshot. His speed instantly increased to several hundred Machs, while his flight vector was aimed directly at the Clone.
Time seemed to stop. You could see the dust suspended in a vacuum, how the previously fast black hole slowed down hundreds, if not thousands of times. And here was Ai, moving agonizingly fast toward the Solver, while the latter didn't even realize it.
The Voidwalker's bones had long turned into dust. His eyes popped even during the maneuver, but even so, he managed to regenerate one of his arms and thrust it forward.
A moment later... Ai's arm protruded behind the Solver's back... tightly holding his core.
The silence shattered with a loud mechanical crack. The black hole disappeared immediately, leaving behind only irreversible destruction. The Solver slowly, as if in horror, turned his head toward Ai, who stood literally in front of him, holding his life in his hands. Then the Solver looked down and saw the arm passing through his ribcage. Before he could say a word, the Clone dissolved into black smoke and was sucked into the core. The Solver was dead. Quickly, without unnecessary pathos. As if he had never existed.
(Bro gave him the Uzi treatment :skull_emoji:).
The vacuum disappeared, the air returned. But nothing more. Gravity remained zero because there was nothing to attract to. The other two pieces of the planet were spatially separated from this one, so they couldn't affect the local gravity.
Ai slowly regenerated. The meaty core in his hand pulsed slowly, in time with the Voidwalker's headache. He breathed heavily, trying to process what the fuck had just happened. Bringing his hand closer, Ai stared into the core, regenerating his eyes beforehand. It wasn't burgundy due to a fleshy casing, like the other cores of the Solver's hosts. It was black, so black that the white indicators in the center, amidst the overgrown flesh and bone growths, seemed too bright. Like a beacon in the darkness.
And Ai, as one of the Solver's hosts, decided to do what he had hammered almost into his brain's subcortex. Opening his mouth as wide as it would go, he brought the core to his face and forcefully bit into it, tearing off a large piece not only of flesh but also of metal. The Voidwalker didn't feel discomfort, but rather... satisfaction.
Then followed a second bite. And a third. Until the core was completely consumed.
Moments after the last bite, the agony began. The Solver's memories poured into Ai's head like a stream of acid, making him literally tear out his hair and dig his fingers into his skull. Pure mental pain made things bad for Ai not only in the subconscious but in reality as well. Lying on the floor, his body shook uncontrollably, knocking stones loose from the cold basement floor.
The bracelets he forgot to take off after those two years of grueling training flew off on their own, releasing the plasma magical stream. The entire basement instantly turned into an inferno.
Only after ten minutes of mental agony, Ai was able to let go of his head and continue drifting in the space of his own subconscious. The grimace of pain slowly turned into a twisted but genuine smile. He was laughing, not only at his victory but at who he had actually defeated.
"So that's what you're like... The-Solver-Who-Won..." the Voidwalker barely uttered, spreading his arms to the sides, slowly restoring his exhausted mental body.
"To win in your own universe... To kill all the hosts... Just to lose to me later... Hah..." It was even hard for him to laugh, the battle was so difficult, even for him.
"How glad I am that you didn't have... a physical body..." Ai said, placing his hands behind his head.
"Otherwise, I wouldn't have pulled it off..."
At the end of these short reflections, Ai closed his eyes and his consciousness fell into the darkness he had grown accustomed to. This battle had been the ultimate mental trial.
----------
I don't think i'm alive