I pulled back with all my remaining strength.
Nothing happened. I gritted my teeth and pulled harder, planting my boots into the stone and throwing my entire body weight backward. His arm didn't even twitch. He didn't shift his weight. He just stood there, pretending to examine his perfectly pristine white gloves for imaginary dust.
He looked down at my strained, trembling arm, tracing the line of my tensed muscles with his eyes. Then, he looked up at my face. That manic, unhinged grin softened slightly into an expression of genuine, almost affectionate amusement. He reached out with his free hand, pinched my cheek like a doting grandmother, and shook my head side to side.
"A push and a shove, fits like a glove!" he noted softly, his voice carrying a note of pleasant surprise. "A grunting little bear, with dust in his hair!"
There was genuine, unfiltered approval in his tone. Somehow, that made the absolute, crushing humiliation of the moment infinitely worse. He was treating me like a toddler who had just successfully thrown a ball for the first time.
"You're strong, little king, like a bee with a sting!" he added cheerfully, his orange eyes crinkling in delight as he gave me an exaggerated thumbs-up. "But you just don't have the right kind of swing! Ding-a-ling!"
He twisted his wrist casually. The sudden, agonizing torque lifted me entirely off the ground. My feet kicked uselessly in the air, scrambling for purchase against nothing, before he effortlessly slung me over his shoulder and twirled me around like a human helicopter blade. With a bright, melodic shout of "Wheeeeee!", he hurled me back down the length of the avenue.
I landed hard, skidding painfully across the rough, uneven stone. My palms scraped violently against the surface, tearing the skin and leaving streaks of red, but I managed to dig my heels in and stop myself just before colliding head-first with the heavy iron gates of a public courtyard. I groaned, rolling onto my back to catch my breath, staring up at the gray, churning sky.
The hedgehog was already standing directly over me, blocking out the light. He was balancing entirely on one foot, his arms spread wide like an airplane, making soft whoosh noises under his breath.
I stared up at him, my chest heaving erratically. He looked down, tilting his head with an inquisitive hum, tapping his chin with one white-gloved finger before suddenly playing a quick game of peek-a-boo behind his hands.
"Down on the ground, like a sad little hound? Again, again, for another round?" he asked, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet.
I forced myself onto my bloody knees, my muscles screaming in absolute agony, and dragged my broken body upright. "Again."
He smiled warmly, clapping his hands together in a rapid, excited rhythm. "Oh, goody, goody gumdrops! That's more like it!"
I lunged. This time, I completely abandoned any arrogant thought of matching his raw speed. It was mathematically impossible. Instead, I tried to predict him. I watched the micro-shifts in his shoulders, the subtle angle of his feet. He moved left; I pivoted sharply, cutting off his angle of approach. He instantly changed direction with a giggle and a playful little salsa shimmy; I dropped low and followed his shadow, keeping my center of mass tight.
For one brief, intoxicating moment, I actually managed to stay with him. Our movements became a localized hurricane of violence between the ancient buildings. My shoes struck the stone in rapid, explosive bursts as I pushed my young body infinitely harder than I had ever dared to push it before. The world narrowed to fragmented flashes of sensory input: the blur of his red-striped quills, the neon flash of his orange eyes, the blinding white of his gloves, and the rhythmic, desperate scrape of my boots against the pavement.
I could almost do it. I was keeping up. I was adapting to the rhythm of his madness.
Almost.
Then, his smile widened until it looked like it might split his face in half.
The crushing realization hit me just a fraction of a second before he accelerated. He hadn't been fighting me. He had been playing with his food. He had deliberately lowered his speed to perfectly match my absolute maximum output, letting me feel like I was succeeding, letting me build a tiny kernel of hope, just so he could violently pull the rug out from under me for his own sick entertainment.
He disappeared completely, leaving behind a cartoonish pop! sound.
I skidded to a violent halt, my boots smoking against the stone. I stood in the middle of the empty street, my guard raised, turning in frantic circles. Silence surrounded me, broken only by my own ragged, desperate breathing and the distant wail of sirens.
Then, two fingers lightly poked me in the ribs, followed by a cheerful, chillingly melodic whisper directly into my right ear, the breath tickling my fur.
"Hide and seek, the future looks bleak. Found you, so meek~."
I spun around, bringing my elbow up in a vicious, blinding strike aimed at his temple.
Too late. He stepped completely inside my guard, did a little jazz-hand flourish, and slammed his shoulder directly into the center of my chest.
The kinetic force carried both of us straight through a heavy wooden market stall, sending shattered timber, torn canvas, and bruised fruit flying high into the air as we tumbled violently into the next street over. I aggressively rolled away from him the absolute moment we hit the ground, scrambled upright with frantic, wide-eyed desperation, and barely had enough time to raise my trembling forearms in a defensive guard before he appeared directly in front of me again.
His fist shot forward like a piston.
It stopped exactly one inch from the bridge of my nose.
He didn't make physical contact, but the sheer, compressed force of the displaced air struck my face like a solid physical blow, snapping my head back and forcing me to stagger backward on weak, unsteady legs.
He could have easily crushed my skull. He could have ended it right there. He chose not to. Instead, he reached forward with a single, pristine white finger and lightly tapped my nose.
"Boop!" he chirped.
It wasn't an act of mercy; it was a calculated demonstration of absolute, terrifying superiority disguised as a playground game. He wanted me to fundamentally understand the insurmountable difference between what I was fighting to achieve and what he could do without even trying. He wanted to feel my terror like a warm blanket.
My breathing became heavy, ragged gasps that tore at my throat. I slowly lowered my trembling arms, realizing how utterly useless they were.
He slowly lowered his fist, looking at me with bright, enthusiastic eyes, tilting his head like a curious puppy trying to understand a new toy. "You learn and you adapt, but you're still completely trapped! A mouse in a maze, lost in a daze!"
I glared at him, spitting a glob of blood onto the cobblestones, my pride refusing to let me yield to a rhyming psychopath who treated physics like a joke. "I'm not done yet, dipshit."
"I know!" he cheered brightly, throwing his arms up like he had just won the lottery. He bounced on his heels, sounding absolutely delighted by my stubbornness. "You try and you fail, to no avail! Oh, this is the most fun on the trail! A flail and a wail!"
I roared in sheer frustration and charged him again, abandoning technique for pure, unadulterated aggression. I feinted low and aimed a spinning kick at his head. He didn't even bother to block it. He simply stepped inside my attack arc, rendering the kick completely useless, casually caught both of my arms by the wrists, and effortlessly used my own forward momentum against me with a playful giggle.
The world flipped violently upside down. I hit the ground back-first with a bone-rattling thud that drove the last ounce of fight from my body. He released me immediately and sprang backward in a graceful backflip, landing lightly on the tips of his toes with a theatrical bow to an invisible audience.
I slowly rolled onto my knees, my body feeling like it had been run over by a steam train, my vision swimming with pain. He was standing several meters away, his hands clasped patiently behind his back, rocking back and forth on his heels, whistling a jaunty little tune as he waited for me.
I stared at him, my chest heaving. He stared back, that unblinking, unnerving orange gaze burning into me with sick, gleeful anticipation.
For the first time since the fight had begun, neither of us moved a muscle. The game, it seemed, was only just beginning.
Thick, black smoke from the damaged relay spire continued rising into the gray sky in the distance. The shrill wail of warning sirens was finally beginning to sound throughout the various districts of Terminus.
Somewhere in the streets behind us, panicked civilians were shouting and running frantically toward the safety of the underground shelters.
My historic broadcast was ruined. My carefully prepared speech, designed to unify the splintered territories and establish my absolute authority, had been violently interrupted before I could even reach its most important conclusion. And the theatrical, manic creature standing in front of me had systematically dismantled every single attempt I had made to stop him while treating me like a prop in a slapstick comedy.
He hadn't done it through some hidden, magical weapon. He hadn't done it through a clever trick. He had done it through raw, overwhelming speed. Through insurmountable strength. Through decades of engineered, perfected experience wrapped in the guise of a total goofball.
I slowly, painfully clenched my aching hands into fists.
He noticed the micro-movement immediately. He gasped dramatically, pressing both hands to his cheeks. "Still thinking about trying again? Say it's true, oh please do!"
"Yes," I spat.
His grin returned in full, terrifying force. "Yippee!"
He crouched slightly, dropping his center of gravity while wiggling his hips like a cat preparing to pounce. I knew exactly what was coming. I lowered my stance, planting my feet as firmly as I could on the cracked stone. For a long, tense moment, the entire street seemed to hold its breath.
Then, he moved.
I moved too, attempting to intercept him. But he crossed the twenty-foot distance between us before my brain could even send the signal to finish taking my first step. His shoulder struck my chest like a falling anvil.
I flew backward, the world blurring into a smear of gray and blue. I slammed violently into a thick stone wall, the impact knocking the last remaining breath from my body. I dropped to the ground like a broken puppet and lay there, completely paralyzed by pain, staring blankly up at the overcast sky.
Footsteps approached. Slow this time.
Almost leisurely. Accompanied by the soft humming of a lullaby.
He stopped right beside me. I sluggishly turned my head. Those bright, unnatural orange eyes looked down at me from above.
He casually offered me a white-gloved hand, wriggling his fingers invitingly. "Up-a-daisy!"
I stared at it suspiciously. "Why?"
He shrugged his shoulders, a lighthearted, bouncy gesture. "Because you're going to keep getting up, silly goose!"
I hesitated, analyzing his relaxed posture for a trap, then finally reached up and took it. He pulled my dead weight upright with absolutely zero effort, dusting off my shoulders with quick, friendly pats. My legs nearly buckled the moment I stood, and I had to heavily lean my shoulder against the stone wall just to remain upright.
-------
I picked myself up from the hard dirt, every muscle in my frame screaming in protest, and forced my breathing to level out. If I couldn't beat him with speed, I had to change the rules of engagement. I couldn't race a bullet, but I could brace for the impact.
I dropped my stance low, planting my boots deep into the cracked earth of the barren outskirts where he had dragged me. Closing my eyes for a fraction of a second, I let go of my visual tracking and forced my nervous system to tune into something else: vibration sensing.
Every supersonic step he took sent microscopic shockwaves rippling through the crust of the ground. By tuning into the frequency of those tremors, I could feel his vector before he even shifted his weight. At the same time, I forced my optical focus wide, pushing my vision into that hyper-accelerated state—slow-motion processing, where the world stretches out and every falling pebble hangs suspended in the air.
I wasn't going to be a moving target anymore. I was going to be a mountain.
A red-and-black streak detonated from the dust, screaming straight toward my ribs.
Through the vibrating hum of the earth, I felt the exact millisecond his foot left the stone. Through my hyper-focused vision, I saw the air compress around his shoulder a fraction of a second before he materialized. Instead of dodging, I locked my joints, braced my core, and slammed my weight downward, turning my entire body into an immovable anchor.
His shoulder slammed into my chest.
The shockwave rattled my teeth and bruised my sternum, but I didn't fly backward. The mountain held.
For the first time since the fight began, the unstoppable force actually stuttered. Sparkles skidded back half a foot, his red boots carving twin trenches into the dirt.
He stopped, blinking in genuine, wide-eyed surprise. Then, his face split into an ecstatic, terrifying grin that stretched from ear to ear.
"Ooh, a stubborn old stump, refusing to slump! A boulder so grand, the best in the land!" he squealed, clapping his hands together like a delighted toddler at a circus. "Let's see if it cracks when the hammer comes down, little clown!"
He vanished again, and the real nightmare began.
This time, he didn't just hit me—he battered me from every conceivable angle simultaneously. A hundred blows rained down in the span of a single heartbeat. Even with vibration sensing and slow-motion vision tracking every incoming vector, the sheer biological reality of my current body betrayed me. I was too young. My stamina reserves were a fraction of what they needed to be; my bones were still developing, and my muscles were already flooding with lactic acid from the sheer stress.
I could adapt to his rhythm, I could read his trajectory, but I couldn't sustain the physical toll. Every block jarred my arms closer to fracture. Every absorbed shock felt like a sledgehammer to my organs.
He was wearing me down not through brute force, but through pure, agonizing attrition, and he was treating the whole thing like a bouncy house.
"Tick-tock, goes the clock! Splish-splash, hit the dash!" he cackled, spinning around me in a hurricane of crimson dust, randomly booping my nose mid-assault just to watch me flinch.
As I deflected a blow that nearly snapped my wrist, the pieces of the puzzle suddenly slammed together in my head, and a cold, paralyzing dread far worse than physical pain flooded my veins.
The Augur of Apollos.
He wasn't just a rogue zealot trying to overthrow a government. He was following a script. The Anarchy Beryl he had almosy certainly been gathering... the awakened ultimate weapon he had unsealed... it all mirrored the darkest nightmares of history.
Why was Sparkles here? Why wasn't he back at the spire instantly obliterating me? Why was he dragging me out to the barrens, wasting time playing tag, rhyming, and treating the end of the world like a theatrical variety show?
Because he was a distraction.
For me.
The realization hit me with the force of an oncoming train. Sparkles didn't care about my speech, my empire, or my newly minted title. He was an apex predator let out of his cage, given just enough leash to keep the strongest fighters on the continent entirely occupied. Meanwhile, back at the hidden facility or deep within the ARK's old network, the Augur was finishing what he started. He had enough Anarchy Beryl now. He was going to power the station's ultimate weapon—the laser, the eclipse, the doomsday engine—and blow Mobius straight to hell.
And I was out here playing hopscotch with a deranged, grinning psychopath who thought global annihilation was a punchline.
Sparkles zipped to a halt a few yards away, tilting his head with a playful hum, his orange eyes sparkling with manic joy. "Ooh, look at the gears, turning with fears! What's the matter, little king? Did you lose your shiny ring?"
I spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the dirt, my hands shaking uncontrollably as I tried to force my exhausted legs to hold me upright. I didn't have time for this. I didn't have the luxury of losing a war of attrition against a creature who didn't even know what fatigue felt like.
"You're wasting your time," I panted, my voice cracking as I glared through the dust. "He's using you."
Sparkles blinked, his goofy smile dropping for a single microsecond into a look of genuine, innocent confusion. Then, he threw his head back and let out a bright, melodic peal of laughter that echoed across the barren wasteland.
"Oh, I know all about the plan, silly man!" he cheered, doing a little jazz kick into the air. "The big green rocks, the ticking clocks! A flash in the sky, and everyone's fried!"
My stomach dropped into an abyss. He knew. He didn't care that he was being used as a tool; to him, the end of the world was just the grand finale of the show.
"And you're just going to let him?" I growled, digging my fingers into the dirt, desperately searching for any way, any angle, to break his momentum.
Sparkles leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees, his radioactive orange eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that burned right through the goofy facade.
"Let him?" he whispered, his voice dropping into a chilling, theatrical purr. "I'm the one holding the popcorn, Copycat. And the movie is about to get real good."
------
"Movie's over bighot!"