JUNE 17th, 2014.

As soon as their eyes met his, Vain noticed something that caused his eyes to widen in fear as his eyebrows raised in horror.

“That’s…? No, no, no… You’re…”  Vain began to say, trailing off as he couldn’t think straight from the fear that had frozen his body.

He was staring at a tilted, circular aqua-green halo that began to form over the top right side of Seth’s “head”. It was styled like the face of a clock, with Roman numerals counting on each side of it. Underneath it was another glowing layer, albeit dimmer, this time styled as gears moving to represent the inner workings of a clock. The hour and minute hands were placed to the north, on “XII”, as they began to make a full rotation.

Vain inches himself backward, pressing against the edge of the balcony’s railing, looking as if he were staring at the devil itself. Realizing he has nowhere to run, he clenches his teeth toward Seth’s new appearance in an act of misplaced defiance.

“Take! 2000 milliliters!” he quickly yells, slamming his arms crossed in front of him in an X position as “Seth” begins to rush toward him, animalistically growling at him.

A bony fist impacts against Vain’s arms, pushing them into his chest as if he had just been hit by an eighteen-wheeler going 116 kilometers per hour. He’s launched away from the balcony, into the air above the street next to the apartment and being hurtled even further past it. Seth crouches down, tensing up his new form as his feet dig into the concrete of the balcony, before leaping toward Vain as fast as a bullet, grabbing his ankle and throwing him back toward the apartment complex. He crashes through the second floor, coughing up blood and exerting in pain, before breaking through it and landing in an apartment’s master bedroom on the first floor.

Seth’s “eyes” open widely as if they’re excited, as he stops his forward momentum against the side of another building, launching back toward the hole that Vain had left in the apartment complex.

Vain struggles to push himself up as he presses his bleeding arm against a large pool of blood on the ground in front of him, gritting his teeth.

“Embody! 3000 milliliters!”

A gigantic spike made of hardened blood erupts from the pool, sending itself hurtling through the hole that Seth was just outside of. Seth’s spiky teeth open wide to show a long tongue hanging out as he looks thrilled by the attack, grabbing the outside of the blood spike while barely dodging it, twisting his torso around as his forward momentum causes sparks to fly. He hangs onto it, using it to slide through the damaged apartment complex. As soon as he reaches the first floor, he punches through the left side of the spike, sending a piece of it hurling toward Vain. He jumps out of the way, dodging it by only a few centimeters as it crushes everything on one side of the room, breaking part of the back wall and allowing the dim greenish-grey light from outside to glare in. 

Seth follows the attack up with another rush toward Vain, this time impacting his fist against his stomach, punching fast enough to push his entire body upward as his back slams against the ceiling, leaving a large indent, and blood pours from his mouth.

“T-ta—” Vain struggles to speak before Seth grabs him by the front of his jacket and throws him against the damaged piece of the blood spike, crashing him through the wall and onto the two-lane street just outside the complex. Vain’s body skips across the asphalt into traffic, hitting the front of an SUV and damaging the entire engine bay as it spins out toward the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

“‘T-take’... ‘t-take’... all you know is…”

Seth slowly and erratically steps outside across the rubble, struggling to get a feel for his new body. He stares forward as Vain’s body lies in the indent of the SUV, smiling at his work as his eyes dip with sadistic pleasure.

This wasn’t Seth.

“‘Take’... I will…”

He leaps forward, landing next to the SUV and leaning over Vain with a wide smile just to taunt him. The driver was knocked unconscious by the crash, with their head hung down in front of them.

“...Take everything from you.”

Vain, with his head tilted backward against the bent hood of the car, shows a confident smile through bloody teeth.

“...Ignite. 9270 millimeters.”

Seth hadn’t noticed that his previous attack caused one of the tanks to leak, which had spread all across the road and around the car Vain had hit. Within an instant, Vain was launched upward by a white-hot explosion that engulfed both Seth and the car, as well as the entire sidewalk and half of the road they were near. Above him, Vain bit into the top of his right hand, ripping the skin off of his knuckles and pointing the arm below him directly at Seth, while bracing it with his opposite arm.

“EMBODY! 1500 MILLIMETERS!” Vain desperately yells, as a collection of twelve tentacle-esque thorned spikes slithers downward, as fast as a shot from a railgun, piercing through Seth, roaring loudly in pain. The spikes root themselves into Seth and suspend Vain in the air. Seth, still roaring in pain, struggles before opening his jaw wide.

During his earlier transformation, another set of information had entered his brain. The words started to scream themselves to him internally, mixing with the sound of his roaring, as if pleading for him to recite them.

That it would solve everything, and end the pain he was experiencing.

And so, he began to.

“Gods… fear none but time. For infinite beings, regret is… the annihilator…” Seth uttered in an even raspier, pained voice.

“What are you…?! Get.. off!”
Vain tries to move his arm away, to break the spikes off, but neither budge. He slams his fist against them, but they don’t shatter. The trap he believed to have caught Seth in had become his own.

Seth held a single index finger out, as a black mass that reversed the colors of whatever was seen through it began to pulse directly above it, as if it was a living thing. It consumed the air close to it, creating a small halo-shaped vacuum. Slowly, it begins to swirl, picking up more speed as it does.

Seth tilts his head upward, as the rain pours against his bloodied sharp teeth, and the sets of eyes look angrily up at the heavens, as if they were cursing them.

“Irony presents itself… in that humans strive to control the clock…” He trails off, looking over at Vain with a stare of pure hatred. His eyelids shift downward in anger, as Vain stares helplessly while striking the hardened blood spikes once more. They finally break, and he falls to the ground.

“Take! 100 millimeters!” he shouts, before his legs impact against the surface. He looks much paler than he had earlier, a sign of continuous blood loss and transfusion making itself evident.

Bright orange and purple wisps of energy begin forming, swirling around the black mass above Seth’s fingertip as they become faster and faster, relative to the rotation speed of the mass itself.

“Kerr held the keys… and grief unlocked the door...”

Vain looked on in horror for only a moment before grabbing the remaining tank of blood that was strapped on his back, bringing it forward, and shoving it with both arms in front of him, with the IV still attached to his forearm.

This was his last resort.

Seth nonchalantly points his index finger, with the mass following above it, toward Vain.

“EMBODY! 7670 MILLILITERS!” Vain yelled, as a thick wall of hardened blood erupted from the canister in front of him, as he fell backward behind it.

Seth tilts his head to the side, realizing the futility of his action.

“...Advent Horizon.”

At the very moment the mass began to speed forward on its own, every sound in the surrounding area was devoured. The fire crackling around Seth from the earlier ignited blood, his low growls, Vain’s yelling as he saw his life flash behind his eyes.

None of it was able to be heard.

As the mass moved forward, small cracks in the space around it followed its path. They were bright white in color, and if someone could have walked around them, they would have remained in the same position regardless of the viewer’s angle.

As it began to touch the edge of the blood wall Vain had erected to defend him, it did not destroy, crush, or even obliterate it.

Everything that came close to it was simply erased.

As if it was never there to begin with, as if God took an eraser to his canvas and wiped it away.

Vain had sealed his fate the moment he ignited the remaining blood in the first canister. Despite there being a leak, there was most likely a more resourceful way that he could’ve used it.

That is what he thought as he saw the mass pass through the internal side of the wall, staring directly at it.

For the first time in his life, Vain, titled the Sin of Pride in Seraphim’s ranks…

...Had known not only defeat, but also regret.


“Nullification.” 

The word pierces through the area like a cannon, as the mass, and the wall of blood Vain had created, both instantly disappear. A blonde woman with long hair, wearing a pure white suit slid into the scene in front of Vain, disappearing with him as soon as she had appeared. The only other detail Seth caught in the moment was that she seemingly wore a black eyepatch over her left eye.

“Sera. Restrain.”

Yasu’s calm but emphasized voice came from behind Seth, a few meters away from the car he was next to, as he turned to see where it originated from. Before he could react, heavy chains had manifested from the ground, clasping themselves around his arms and legs as Kat rushed toward him with large gauntlets around her forearms that looked like thick gravestones. She leaned her right shoulder into a hard punch to his stomach, causing his jaw to slack as his tongue shot out of his mouth, his eyes wincing from the attack.

Just then, the last grain of sand belonging to the hourglass in Seth’s forehead had reached the bottom. Nobody had noticed it was there due to the intensity of the situation, not even Vain previously.

The halo above Seth’s head faded away until it was completely gone, as the plates of armor stacked against each other, began to recede from where they had come from. The spines that jutted from Seth’s back began to push themselves inward, back into his body, as well. As the secondary head moved backward over the top of Seth’s human head, Kat noticed that he was currently unconscious.

“Hey, Yasu…?” Kat begins to say, sounding very confused. “There’s no way in hell I killed him, right...?”

“He’s unconscious,” Yasu retorts, looking unimpressed, “typical for someone going through their first synchronization.”

“This guy… synchronized with a god?” Kat questions, still confused as her gravestone gauntlets begin to crumble away and dissipate into the air, catching Seth in her arms. “What could a human desire that even comes close to a Numet-class’s wants…?”

“Guess that’s why Liam told us to bring him in.”

“Eh...? Seriously? Do we even have restraints on us?!”

Yasu stares at Seth’s unconscious body, as Kat lays him on the asphalt. The fire had burned the surface, causing an even blacker appearance than usual.

“He won’t do anything,” he says, confidently.

“Are you sure of that?” Kat cocks her eyebrow at him, not believing what she’s hearing.

“It’s an experienced hunch. Something you don’t have yet,” Yasu retorts, staring at her, while pointing down the road at their parked sedan. “Now shut it, and put him in the car.”

Kat stares at him for a moment, bewildered by his confidence, before sighing with her eyes closed.

“Whatever you say…” she trails off, crouching down to pick up Seth as the two of them head back to their car. She looks down at him, peacefully knocked out.

What is… with you? You looked so evil earlier, now you’re just… napping?

She sighs again, opening the back right side car door and placing his body inside, while tying his wrists up with the two available seat belts, suspending his forearms in the air as his head hangs down with zero resistance.

Then again… we always get the weird ones. Even for signers.

She closes the back side door, opens the passenger seat door, and places herself inside as Yasu turns on the ignition.