For a moment, the room remained unged to Yumi’s eye. Then all of the exposed walls flipped to bee ft. A well polished shine reflected across their surface as the chairs disappeared and she found herself standing on her own. ‘This isn’t like before at all… Yuki and her really must have made drastic ges…’

  Yumi stepped out from her er to look around at the room. Even though it was the room that they were in before Phoibe was missing, even more of a sign of the ge iy. “Is everyone feeling okay?”

  “I thought we were going into your mind,” pined Seiji, noting the ck of ge, “This is just the same room.”

  Projeg into the room as a hologram, Phoibe appeared before them. “That’s not accurate. This is just the staging room while Yumi’s mind is being sed.”

  “You’re here too?!”

  “I’m monit all of you from the terminal. This is just a proje from my voice altered into a digital avatar.”

  “…err…right… So the real shit is happening soon then?” Seiji jumped straight to the part that he had better grasp on rather than dwelling.

  “That’s right. The space you’re in should alter based on feedback from Yumi’s mental state. From there, you should be able to find and i with the personalities that exist in her mind.”

  “Hope it’s not a repeat of st time…”

  A nod came from Yumi as she agreed with Seiji. The whole thing presented a risk to her. Being this close could allow them more trol over her, but she had to take it. ‘I haven’t truly been face to face with them before. Maybe not being suppressed by them will give me more trol.’ It was mere theory and hope for her more than anything. She didn’t want to endanger everyone, but she had already passed that up. Now all Yumi could do was take an active stance against them.

  Phoibe wasn’t wroher. In moments, the room altered itself once more, however it expanded and disappeared into a white void. Any sense of grouy evaporated away. An endless bnk space g aail stretched out before them.

  “Is this your mind, Yumi?”

  “It’s simir to a pce I saw,” ented Yori.

  “Hey man, you see?!”

  “Would appear that while in this virtual space I’m not using my eyes to see.”

  “But I’m still not seeing anyone else other than us,” Yumi noted as she started to walk around. The sense of being in a fined space previously left her a little apprehensive about w too far. Despite that, the void had no boundaries that she could find. She explored beyond what she felt was the limits of the room and nothing stopped her. “So we’re in my mind now…”

  In the distance, a new se approached, rapidly rewriting the spabsp; They found themselves within a city, not ohat they found familiar. It could easily be any Japay as vaguely non-descript as it was. ‘A city?’

  “Hey, what the hell?!”

  Yumi turned around to Seiji, alerted. She hadn’t noticed everyone being dragged away from her by some invisible forbsp; “Everyone!” Her feet pushed herself as fast as she could, but she was used to her superhuman body. Within the virtual world she didn’t seem to have that power. Once more she was just a normal girl.

  Out of her reach, a house sucked everyone up through the front door. When she arrived it was already closed behind them. Pounding and kig on the door did nothing once she discovered that it would not open. It was locked and firmly shut.

  Her friends were locked away from her.

  “Are they ing?” An uneasy feeling overcame her heart. Something told her that she should be on edge. Yumi stepped away from the house in the dire of the feeling she got. There was nothing she could do for her friends. It seemed like she had to face her demons alone. That was what she thought it was telling her.

  And she might have been right.

  Before her, dowreet appeared three figures masked in shadows. Their entire forms were bck barely even refleg light. She knew nothing about them, but inside her heart it told her that they were the ohat she sought. “So you’ve e for me…”

  Chapter 386 – Captured Reality

  Yet to Yumi’s surprise Yuki and Yori suddenly popped up ireet in front of her. “Yuki? Yori? What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know…”

  Yuki looked over at the house that he had been in a moment before. “We were inside just before trying to find a way out and then I got sucked out through a bck portal.”

  “Yeah...it’s them!” Yori immediately seemed to pick up ohree figures staring them down across the street. He went into a defeance ready for a fight.

  Yumi expected to run out ahead of them and try to ease the rising tensions, but something stopped her. A force pulled her away, dragging her up into the sky. Green light ed around her, sealing her away behind a barrier. She pounded her fists against the unmoving field uo break through. “I thought they wanted me! This is supposed to be my fight!”

  It wasn’t until he saw the bck figures start moving towards them in an aggressive charge that Yuki took to defense as well. “I think they’ve got it in for the two of us…”

  Grinding his teeth together, not looking forward to having to fight three at once when one was hard enough. “You seem to be right… One of them I know already has it out for me. Perhaps they see us as a threat to them.”

  “You might be right about that!” Drawing up his Field, mist appeared around him as he received the charging bde of one of them. The force of the swing was enough to blow away all of his mist pletely exposing him. Only the bit he could keep around his hand to grab the sword mao keep him from losing a hand.

  Calling out his two dark energy bdes, Yhly blocked the spearhead of a jumonji yari. He fought with the cross bdes he base of the spear as they desperately wanted his flesh. However, he wasn’t prepared for a focused beam of energy to shoot him through the shoulder. “Behind?!” he growled in pain as he tried to figure out where the third had gone.

  Yuki tried to summon back his mist, but the swings of the person came too fast. Each blow bsted away his mist with effortless ease and drew up blood. He could barely mahe Field around him to keep himself protected. ‘I barely even hold my own against one of them…’ There were three and two of them were attag Yori directly with him being uo help.

  Up in the sky, Yumi cwed her fingers in frustratiohe barrier. “This is my fault… I brought them here…” A spark jumped down her arm quickly disappearing.

  Thinking that he started to get some sort of pace against the swordsman, Yuki suddenly sensed a disturban his mist, the bulk of which was cast off him. He couldn’t even look behind himself feeling that he should. If he did, the bde he struggled to keep from cleaving him in two would succeed. And because of that it wasn’t until the figure disappeared into thin air that he could look behind him.

  It was clearly for a reason and one he could do nothing to avoid or stop. “Crap!” he yelled as a stampede of women crashed into him. The force of them picked him off his feet dragging him away from Yori and likely the swordsman as well fighting him. “What the hell is this?!” he managed once he got some sense of himself back.

  And what’s more, he felt something off about it. They didn’t just look like a random crowd running through out of nowhere. Each of them looked at him with uling eyes. They all wanted him. They started to paw and cw at him. There were too many for him to fight back against. “Get off me!” No matter what he did they had his arms locked down along with his legs. He was helpless.

  Then through the women came the bck bde cleaving nearly a dozen of them in half, spraying blood all over him while also cutting a horizontal wound into his chest. The force bsted him out of the women and in the air.

  A full minute of tumbling and flying passed before he recovered. Onder his own trol again, he could check the depth of the wouook. “It wasn’t as deep as I feared, but I ’t let another like that through. Those womeaking away my barrier piece by piece so that the swordsman could nd a decisive blow on me. This is really dangerous…”

  Blog the spear bde again, Yori kept having to py specifically to their pabsp; “They’re extremely skilled…” The exact position that they forced him to block set him up for the raack again. He was slightly better prepared for it with his barrier, but even that wasn’t enough. They kly how much force was o pee his barrier. Another wound carved out in his arm. “They’re slowly pig me apart…”

  From Yumi’s view, she could only watch as the two were being cut up and dragged out. She khat they couldn’t win. The oute had already beeermined from the start. her was a matbsp; And she sat up locked away. “I ’t…” Another spark jumped over her fingers.

  Before long Yuki crashed into the street o Yori a bloody mess. The Field around him disappeared. Yuki was exhausted. Yori slipped up in his attempt to anticipate and took the spear bde to his gut. It dropped him to the ground almost immediately as he began to bleed out.

  Both were defeated.

  “NO!!” Yumi shouted seeing them go down and their foes going in for the killing strikes. She rammed her fingers into the barrier wanting out now. “I won’t…let you…! NO!!!”

  Sparks suddenly jumped all over Yumi’s body erupting into a mass of light exploding aroying the barrier. As she fell out of the sky, white energy rapidly materialized around her. Growing out of her back like wings, Yumi drew back her arm as a spear of white energy amassed rapidly.

  Flung at all three figures, everything was obliterated into white light. Yumi charged into the light going after Yuki and Yori. “I won’t let you kill them!” She grabbed a hold of someone’s arm pletely blind in the light and searched out for the other. There wasn’t going to be ahat would take them away from her.

  Energy erupted rapidly from Yumi fueling the white void in strength as the space quaked. All of reality shook under Yumi until it shattered. Ay sightless void filled her vision now.

  From outside the simution, Phoibe scrambled around to keep up with the overflowing data. “Damn, her mental capacity is insane. This is far exceeding any of our pns.” She began to lose trol of the system like before and all of the termeasures in pce meant nothing. It was just aability now. “Looks like you were right after all. Quite the typical oute, but we’re pying with reality. Things won’t be as perfect as a book. It’s all on you now. Yumi’s mind has pletely taken trol of the system and now you’re stu there at her whims…”

  “Ugh…it hurts…” Yumi muttered as she suddenly came tetting what happened. Her mind still hung in a fog about the events. She then jerked up off the ground as she remembered everything. “Yuki! Yori!” Turning her head rapidly, she sought them out hoping that they would be o her, but only found Yuki. “Yuki!”

  At least one of them was with her, she smiled a little with relief. “ you hear me, Yuki? Are you alright?” She poked and pushed on him trying to see if he was alive. Everything seemed to indicate with the way his body reacted that he was. He was just slow in moving.

  A groan came from his lips as he woke up. “…yeah…but I’m injured…” he said without thinking, but popped up quickly with a strange blink in his eyes. He examined his arm and then his chest. “It’s gone! I’m not hurt at all…”

  Yumi immediately ed her arms around him, hugging him tightly so happy that he was alive and even unharmed now. “Yuki…”

  “Ouch, ow, ow! You’re hurting me, Yumi! You’re strohan me!”

  “Sorry! I’m sorry!” She jumped away getting embarrassed as she saw what she was doing as well. A moment after she jumped to her feet needed some spad air from him. It was only supposed to be a moment away from him, but her eyes stopped on her surroundings. “Umm…Yuki…”

  “Huh?” Taking a long moment to get caught up on things, Yuki slowly looked over to Yumi and then se. “…this is…”

  Yumi took a step back away from the vilgers that were pointing their farming tools at them, scared at their sudden arrival. The modern city they were in was gone, repced with an a era Japan out of paintings and myth. And their friends were nowhere in sight. “What’s going on?!”