Through some probably incredibly stupid choices, I had wound up in Litus Empirica during a void storm with Aira and Syval. I was trying to do hero crap, because they were apparently the hero Tokickaman that's been all over the news. We were in the Taramin Labs, whatever the hell that was, peeking around a corner watching Arctus and Octa Kathron, Zeta's terrible parents who were trying to break into a vault. I was surprised my head wasn't spinning.

"Didn't you recognize them?" I asked. Before Aira was part of the group that brought me into the void trying to find Jeans, they had been in contact with the Kathrons.

"It took me a second," Aira said. "Like a second after you noticed."

"Which is kind of weird because you worked with them," I said.

"That..." Aira crossed her arms.

"You worked with them?" Syval asked, eyes narrowing. Then his expression went back to a more neutral one. "Why's that a problem? Is it a problem to work with Zeta's parents? And um, which one of your friends is Zeta, again?"

"Ugh, it'd take too long to explain," I said. "Sorry Aira, I don't wanna call you out, just trying to be cautious is all," I said.

"I haven't seen them since the...unpleasantness," Aira said. “Crap, hide!”

Aira touched our arms again and in the next second, I was upside down, my waist embedded in the tile ceiling. Aira had teleported us literally into the damn building.

“Aira, what the hell!” I hissed, not liking the sensation of being halfway through a solid object.

“It’s fine, it’ll hold you in place!” she whispered. “Just shut up!”

I was dizzy right away too, ready to grumble or fight or something, but I held my tongue as Arctus Kathron walked under us.

“I’m giving you one hour!” He called back to Octa.

None of us dared to move as the man took his sweet time walking away, footsteps loud on the ground. He paused for a split second, and I thought we were toast. But he kept walking, getting a bit of gate rosin out of his pocket. He scraped a fang on it and in a flash, left to the void.

“That’s interesting,” Aira said.

“It’d be really interesting if you’d let us down!” I said.

“Oh! Right, sorry,”

I felt relieved once we were back on solid ground and I wasn’t halfway in something.

“Don’t ever do that again,” I said.

“I protected us!” Aira said.

“At least a warning would be nice,” Syval said.

“Don’t take her side!” Aira pouted. “You know, if we’re doing callouts, we really should have told you to not bring that.” She pointed to my wristband.

“Huh?” It was just the power blocker wristband they gave us when we first got to Rising Shards (well, not my original, I had accidentally smashed a few).

“Oh my god, why did you bring that?” Syval hissed.

“What?” I asked.

“They track our location with those!” Syval said. “We had to tell the teachers our wristbands glitched when it said we were halfway around the world!”

“I’ll just tell them that!” I said.

“They’re not gonna believe it twice!” Syval said.

Syval could get really annoying. And even though Aira was an original team—well, Zeta would say Team Starlight, but I was still hunting for a cooler name—member, her path had taken her away from us, so I wasn’t feeling any of the synchronized team vibes I felt with Zeta, Oka, Lillia, Marmalade, and the others when we were on missions.

“Then fine, I’ll take the damn thing off!” I said.

In trying to unlock the device from my wrist, I accidentally pressed something on it, sending a wave of energy forward. The wave hit Octa Kathron, who didn’t seem to notice. After a second, a hue of yellow light surrounded her.

“The piss filter,” I gasped.

“The what?” Syval said.

“Didn’t your teachers tell you about scanning?” I asked.

“Scanning what, documents?” Syval asked. “The hell does that have to do with a piss filter?”

“Scanning void people,” I said. “If you scan them and it has that yellow hue, they’re retention sprites. Piss filter.”

“Do you have to call it that?” Syval asked.

“If you come up with a better shorthand for it, tell me,” I said. “In the meantime, that chick out there isn’t real. She’s a memory of Zates’ mom.”

“And who is Zate now?” Syval asked.

“Zeta, dumbass!” I said. “I should’ve tried it on Arctus, too.”

“What does this mean?” Aira asked.

Retention sprites were a kind of void monster (at least I think they were void monsters technically speaking) Cani could make, looking like past versions of a person. They could walk around and spy on people. Zeta had met her dad as a teenager already, and we had fought off a bunch of retention sprites of the Sharai army too. I didn’t know if it was more likely that both the Octa and Arctus we saw were retention sprites, but at least we knew for certain Octa was.

“I dunno, but we can probably kick her ass way easier now,” I said.

“Isn’t there a thing we can say that makes retention sprites go away immediately?” Aira asked.

“There is! What was it?” I asked.

“I can’t remember,” Aira said.

A heavy, mechanical clunk came from inside the vault door. If Arctus was a bit more patient, he would’ve been able to get in right away. Instead, we were gonna make sure that wasn’t happening.

“Let’s just fight her regular style, then!” Syval said. He got in a running stance, then rocketed forward. “Tokickaman is here to fight evil and, uh, something!”

“Ugh,” I physically recoiled.

“I know, he’s really bad at that,” Aira said.

Aira and I weren’t far behind as Syval tried to tackle the Octa sprite. The vault doors slowly opened behind them as they clashed. Octa’s sprite yelped and tried to fight off Syval, but wasn’t prepared for Aira to teleport behind her, kicking her in the face.

Not wanting to be left out of the action, I took the first opening I had to shoot some ice bolts out, hitting our enemy right in the face. She fell backwards against a wall, then went still. The Octa sprite’s arms fell limp in front of her as her head whipped to the side, then upward.

“Endora loves you,” she said, a horror movie grin on her face.

“That’s so creepy, what the hell!” Syval said.

“I think we’re winning, though, keep at it!” Aira said.

The three of us didn’t give the retention sprite a chance to fight back. As we gradually knocked her down with our powers, she just kept chanting, over and over:

“Endora loves you. Endora loves you. Endora loves you. Endora loves you. Endora loves you. Endora loves you.”

She looked kind of pathetic as she groveled on the ground, saying that over and over. I had enough experience with Endoran business to know what to do next. I conjured a block of ice above her and dropped it down without a second thought.

“It’s unrequited,” I said.

The gears in the vault continued to open slowly, not enough to let us in yet, but it was clear it wouldn’t be long. Aira needed to recharge her abilities a bit, so we weren’t just gonna blink past the vault gate. Syval poked at the Elka ooze on the ground, the remnants of the sprite.

“So Zeta’s parents are retention sprites,” Syval said. “Does that mean Zeta is one, too?”

“I don’t think they work like that,” Aira said. 

"Her parents aren't retention sprites, they made retention sprites of themselves," I said. "And we all scanned each other a bunch of times after they showed us how to do it. If any of us were retention sprites, we’d know it.”

“Well, scan me then!” Syval said, patting himself all over. “I’m having a crisis here, what if I’m a retention sprite?”

“It scanned the whole area when Kalei did it, you were part of that, you didn’t have the yellow glow,” Aira said.

“Oh,” Syval said.

I didn’t have any clue what was really going on, but as the door finally opened to us with one last mighty clunk, I hoped we’d find some answers inside.