After Arcadia had heard the entire story and hit Vil on the head three times in a row for his actions, she immediately asked Arthur to follow her out of the base and left the house. Elle, telling him to be quick unless he did not want to be hit in the head too, went back to watching the movie with Vil. So, he quickly followed after the leader and went out the front door. Surprisingly, Dee was also waiting for him right there.

  “Get on.” Arcadia started climbing up the dragon’s scales, and Arthur did the same after her.

  “Isn’t this place too small to fly around?”

  “It is. Who said we are flying?”

  She leaned back, stretched her arms, and lay down on the dragon’s neck as he started walking back to the entrance of the town, where they had entered. Arms behind her head, she looked at the dome above them. Arthur took a quick peek too, but did not find anything particularly interesting. The stars were almost invisible because of all the light anyway, so it was just a pitch-black void.

  “You’re lucky, you know?” She spoke up all of a sudden.

  “Huh?”

  “The universe you come from is pretty good. For Earth, I mean. I’m sure that some other planets blew up for whatever reason in yours.” She sighed and took out a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She took one out and put it in her mouth, “I’m sure you’ve heard all sorts of things, but almost all of us come from some fucked-up place. I mean, Dee is a dragon.”

  “Things are not that bad on my Earth.” He argued, but was quickly shut up by Arcadia hitting his scaled and asking him to do just that.

  “That part is fucked up because it's way too cool, alright? Just walk.” The leader then put the pack back in her pocket and took out a lighter. She quickly lit the cigarette in her mouth and took a puff, “Either way, Elle might look the most normal, kinda like you. But he comes from a place where they found out Hell was a real place and then commercialized it. I mean, come on. What the hell?”

  “Does that mean Hell is a real place in general?”

  “I don’t know, new blood. Are maybe dragons real in general, and they just haven’t found them in your universe? Do horses just have the power to disappear and reappear, but Knuckleduster Joe is the only one who figured it out? Why don’t you tell me? I thought you were a science teacher.”

  “Got it.”

  “Smart man.” She took another puff and blew the smoke away. Arthur made a point to move away from the smoke and spread it with his hands, “Not a fan, huh? Well, that’s fine. You get into the habit when you’re surrounded by ruins every second of your life. And then you keep going even though you’re living on the Moon now.”

  “There was an apocalypse in yours?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Arcadia laughed, “Weird stuff. Turns out ancient aliens existed, and this one kid had the power to talk to them. Got involved in a war between two of their races, and then killed most people on the planet to save the girl he loved. Only the ones with the same blood group as her survived. O negative.”

  “I’m not O negative.” Arthur noted, “So, that differs too, I guess.”

  “Yup. Elle actually tried to transfuse his blood into one of us who was dying before, but it did not work. Massive mismatch, and the guy died.”

  It was weird to Arthur just how many different things had happened to this little group over time. They had been through so much over and over again. So much so that not even a single part of his story had fazed Arcadia until Vil’s now-defunct suicide. And that, too, had only surprised her because she thought it was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. In that reaction, she had been very close to Elle.

  “How long have you all been at this? How many Arthurs?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. Somewhere around four months would be my guess. I was one of the first ones to be attacked, and ended up following one of their assassins through the portal they opened up. Huge story there, but we don’t have the time to go through it. Anyway, I met Elle first, and then we met Dee. A few more after that agreed to join, but died on the way. Then Vil, who unfortunately never dies; God bless his soul. And then a few more after that, and then you. Many, many dozen universes.”

  “Hmm. What’s the weirdest one you’ve seen?”

  Arcadia burst out into laughter and sat up. Taking another puff, she pulled her knees closer to her chest and rested her head on them, “I don’t know. Too many weird fucking places in the multiverse. One where everything was animated, go figure. I don’t even know if that worked. The Arthur there did not have enough frames on him to be able to cross a portal. Just cheap quality, really. But a few stick out for all the wrong reasons…”

  “Like?”

  “Like Dee’s place, for example.”

  “Arcadia.” The dragon spoke in an authoritative tone, and she smiled, raising her head.

  She turned to check where they were, and Arthur stood up too. In front of them was a massive, empty ground where a few kids were playing at one of the ends. Arcadia stood up beside him and hopped off the dragon without any support, still managing to land on her feet and kicking up some moon dust. Then, after a short break to stretch her legs, she started walking again.

  “You don’t like talking about the past?” Arthur asked.

  Dee replied in a whisper, “Not really.”

  “That’s fine. You’re pretty cool.” He patted the dragon and then climbed down by jumping from scale to scale.

  Once he was down, he noticed Arcadia had already made her way to the kids and was talking to them while pointing at the massive blue dragon standing near the entrance of the ground. They jumped with excitement and immediately started running in their direction.

  “You don’t get bored with the kids?” Arthur asked.

  This time, the dragon just chuckled, “You are the one asking me that question?”

  Arthur joined him in his laughter and started walking towards Arcadia, who seemed to be waiting for him in the now-empty ground. As he passed the kids, he ruffled their hair, and they kept running to the dragon. Behind, as they got there, Dee suggested they take a round of the town, and they hopped on his back.

  “Never one to refuse letting some kids have fun.” Arcadia smiled as the dragon vanished from view, “I’ll respect his wish and not share too much. For now, you can consider the animation one the weirdest. The impact frames were quite something to see when they occurred once in a while.”

  “Oh, don’t get started. Otherwise, I’ll get drawn too deep and start wondering what art styles even mean over there.”

  “Oh, they get weird.” She laughed and took one last puff of the cigarette before throwing it on the ground and stubbing it with her shoe. Then, she bent down and picked it up before tossing it into a small tin box, which was also in her pockets, “I mean, whatever you want. Gender, sexuality, religion, philosophy, politics. Art styles are everything.”

  “Yeah, no. I…like having the sanity to not go down rabbit holes.”

  She raised her eyebrows with a sly smile, “Good, good. Quick question. How many types of Modules are there?”

  “Six?”

  “Good, correct. Very true. Now, how many Module types are there?”

  “Huh? S-six?”

  “Yeah, no. Very good. I got that. But how many are there? Like, actually?”

  “Uh, I-I don’t get it? Six? Space, Time, Strength, Communication, Biotech, and Pure Tech?”

  “Yes! Correct. That is true and absolutely factual…publicly available information, but I mean, how many are actually there? Yeah? Like, you can drop the pretence now, since it’s just the two of us…”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “No. I actually only know six. That’s what Elle told me.”

  Arcadia pursed her lips and looked in the general direction of their home base with a very, very sour expression.

  ____________

  “You know, I’m getting a strange feeling that I forgot something and, like, Arcadia’s gonna beat me to death when she gets back.”

  Elle could not just ignore the chill that had suddenly gone down his spine.

  “Oh, forget it! Do not let your childish intuitions that have absolutely no truth or reliance behind them ruin the moment. Watch! They have just reached Rohan! I absolutely love this part.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Couldn’t you have named your horse something cool like Shadowfax?”

  “Knuckleduster Joe is a terribly beautiful name! And by the gods, he could beat Shadowfax in a race anytime. He is the one who truly moves like the wi-”

  _____________

  “I’m gonna fucking kill him. Urgh!”

  Arcadia groaned and crouched down, holding her head in her hands. Then, she stood back up and pulled her hair backwards. Taking a hair tie out of the never-ending reserves in her pockets, she tied her hair into a hurried pony and then looked at him.

  “Alright, take that sword off your back. Hold it.”

  “Huh?”

  He looked back and noticed that the katana that he had taken from Lana was on his back with a scabbard. When had that happened? He didn’t remember it, but apparently it had been there the entire time. Arthur guessed people were not lying when they claimed that swords became a part of your body when you started to get used to them. Elle had probably made the scabbard for him back when he was busy staring at Celia during the escape.

  Now that he thought about it, he did remember something like that happening. He cursed his lack of remembering important things and took the sword out.

  “Alright. We’re gonna have a quick fight. First, tell me your countdowns for both skills.”

  “Uh…it is two minutes for Object Reversal, and I think it’s around three minutes for Time Reversal. I haven’t really checked properly for the latter.”

  “And both of them are currently free?”

  “Yeah. Both.”

  “You are sure about that?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t used it at all.”

  He looked down at the skill counter on his HUD. For some reason, though, Time Reversal had been half greyed out and was slowly gaining the green color again. That meant he still had around ninety seconds until he could use it again. He quickly switched to Object Reversal, but that also been used up. It required about thirty more seconds to come back.

  When…had he used them? On the dragon? No, that made no sense. He was supposed to have used Object Reversal ninety seconds ago, and that was when he was passing by the kids…

  “You used Object Reversal to stop the pole from falling on the kids. What do you mean?”

  “What?”

  He looked at Arcadia, who was confident in what she had seen. Looking back, that was indeed right. One of the light poles on the ground had fallen down. As soon as he noticed that, his eyes moved down once more, only to see that Object Reversal was now completely greyed out. He switched, and Time Reversal had gone back by thirty seconds, too. It now needed two whole minutes to be used again.

  “Is something wrong?” She asked.

  “Yeah, it just seems to be…glitched? I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense. I know I didn’t use them. But I clearly did. Memory loss?”

  That was when he noticed that Arcadia was trying her best not to smile. But as soon as their eyes met, she burst out into laughter and gave up on trying to control herself. Confused, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond. That was when Arcadia slowly walked up to him and gave him a pat on the back.

  “I guess that means I won, right?”

  “Huh? Yeah, I guess…”

  No, wait. He did not want to say that at all. They hadn’t even started fighting, but he had just automatically said that he was alright with her being considered the winner. He wasn’t, though. Why did he say that?

  Letting go of his shoulder, Arcadia smiled and started walking back to the entrance. Why? Wasn’t she going to tell him something? Or had she…already done that? As all the random information started to come together, things started to make a bit more sense. She had been asking about the modules. So, was there another one that Elle hadn’t mentioned? Something secret.

  He looked at his own Modules and noticed that the cooldown was over. He could use them again.

  He couldn’t just let her get away with it like this. He switched to Time Reversal and slowly walked closer to her with his eyes closed.

  One. Two. Three.

  Skill Activation

  Time Reversal

  Immediately, caught in the radius, Arcadia started walking backwards. As she moved by him, she looked at him with eyebrows raised and said something. But since she was under the skill, it came out all wrong.

  “.γqqi?t o? ?i t??T !??oW”

  Then, moving even further back, she ended up at the place she had asked him if she won. Leaving her there, he closed his eyes once more and stretched his second arm. It was the same principle as when he had deflected the electric blast. One. Two.

  He deactivated Time Reversal.

  “I guess that means I won, right?”

  Three.

  Skill Activation

  Object Reversal

  “Or…not?” She added, groaning, “Shit, that was good. I lost, I guess.”

  Arthur laughed and sat down, only getting louder by the second. He wasn’t sure what had just happened, but it was the most complicated, yet the simplest thing he had done in his life. He wasn’t sure what her abilities were, but all he had done was use his most basic technique.

  She had been sure that she won. So sure, that she just used concept reversal on her and made her admit that she lost. The very concept of her being victorious was reversed. How much weirder could these powers get?

  “You…are good.” She laughed too, walking to Arthur and helping him stand up.

  Once he was up, he brushed the grey dust off his pants, and the curiosity reached a breaking point, “Alright, go on. What even was that?”

  “Uh…just a second.”

  Her eyes moved downwards to where her skill countdown probably was. Her irises strained to note it, which probably meant the skill was on its last few seconds left. Sure enough, she looked back up immediately after and spoke.

  “Elle should have told you that there are seven in total. The last one we don’t talk about because I am the only known user of it. The moment we find someone else, we’ll consider being a bit more open. Until then, though, we might as well keep it silent.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Intellect Module.” Arcadia explained, “Now, turn around three times and then jump up in joy like a little girl, your legs and hands in the air. Also, you totally did not notice me closing my eyes for three seconds and actually heard something about me explaining the Intellect Module to you instead.”

  “What?”

  But before he knew it, Arthur had already done exactly what she asked – ending with a jump that he was grateful Celia hadn’t been here to see. His cute smile while doing it would probably have fueled her sarcasm for years to come. But when he was done and back on the ground, he couldn’t believe that that had been him just a second ago.

  “Ok, stop!” He still couldn’t stop himself from laughing out of excitement, “What is that?”

  “Fine, fine. I promise I’m not using it anymore.” Arcadia started walking back to the town, and he followed, “The Intellect Module is, as you can guess, based around the brain and its powers. Mine in particular allows me to do two things. The first is to make people believe whatever I say. If they are caught off guard and fall for it, then the thing becomes real because of perception. If they catch me, then I lose. Big deal. The second, however, is way more interesting.”

  “Let me guess.” Arthur stopped her as he tried to narrow down everything based on what she had shown him. Then, when he was sure, he answered, “It makes their time yours. If I am right, then you have a two-minute cooldown. And you made me believe that I had used my skill when I really hadn’t, but because I did believe it, the time that I ‘used’ had to go somewhere. So, it went to you and allowed you to reset your own skill cooldown.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.” She nodded with an impressed expression, “I mean, the skill condenses it down to a few confusing lines, but that’s about it. The main idea is to just catch people unaware.”

  “What is it called? The skill, I mean?”

  “Oh. You know…” She sighed, “Why do you have a crow’s nest on your head?”

  The moment he realized she had used her skill again; he became aware of it.

  Skill Activation

  All Hail the Queen

  “Fitting.” He looked at her.

  “Well…”

  “How did you get it back so fast, though?”

  Arcadia laughed and kept walking.

  “How?!”

  He never found out.

  "Sixth Magnitude Star" by zarame! The second ending to the seventh season of My Hero Academia (how long was this show!?)