Two minutes, two minutes, two—

  “Tian!”

  He looked. Fenix, his sister, was running toward him.

  “What?!” he asked loudly.

  He was behaving. He had even put on pants.

  “Tian, take Sara!” Fenix shouted from a distance, waving her hand. She had stopped and turned around.

  The others were screaming at her.

  Why had the dog bothered them? Tian got angry. When the others saw that he was angry, they stopped shouting.

  Excellent. Three months of getting ready, patting him on the head, and saying, ‘How smart, how wonderful.’ When he uploaded the documents to the system a month ago, after they had finally unblocked him following that scandal in May, eleven were added as co-authors.

  Eleven fucking co-authors, each claiming they contributed something to the idea. And they had to add their surnames because Tian was only seventeen. Underage. Definitely that he only managed to come up with the idea under their supervision.

  Tian petted Sara on the head. The poor old dog had been brought up almost flawlessly. Well, almost, because she always listened only to him. That was the point; a dog should listen only to its master. Fuck, never mind.

  One minute.

  Everything had been planned. They had gathered the materials with difficulty. Just as he had been saying for two years, maybe longer. They needed to send everything, or Unio would invade them with an army, and it would be over.

  “Pfrrrrrrr,” Tian snorted aloud.

  “What?” Fenix screamed.

  At that moment, it began.

  The generator fired right on time, perfect synchronization. All those gathered, those who had the biggest Ability, began to load their energy into the device.

  The ball of energy, small and round, began to grow, swelling like a balloon. It looked a bit rainbow-like.

  Fifteen… fifty… one hundred. Ready!

  “Now!” Tian shouted, a bit too high-pitched. “Fuck, hormones again,” he added angrily to himself.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Fenix shot the ball. His sister had finally mastered her Element. It was an old knowledge, exquisite and very much delicious.

  It was his turn; Tian fired his Element, along with three other Abilitiers who had managed to learn it, too. They shot the ball.

  For fuck’s sake, how it exploded!

  It fired at the Gate and—yes! It lit up! The Gate lit up, and it started working! Tian hadn’t been entirely sure if his hypothesis would work—

  “Tian!” Fenix interrupted his train of thought. “Tian! Tian!”

  “Calm down, it works; it’s fine!” he shouted back as he looked at the meters.

  It was fine.

  “Sending!!” he yelled louder so that those diplomats of the seven sorrows could hear.

  In a second, he added his tiny encoded note.

  ‘Pop.’ It was sent.

  “Closing!!” he yelled again, and he extinguished the energy ball with a flick of his hand.

  The Gate closed. Wonderful. He managed to send what he wanted, the question about the clubs—

  Suddenly, he was hit on the head.

  “What is this?” It was his sister who hit him; he didn’t notice her approach.

  Sara barked. But Fenix wasn’t afraid of his dog.

  “What? What? It’s just a question,” Tian started loudly but finished quietly.

  In the crowd, there was commotion. Maybe they wouldn’t…? No, they noticed. Possibly, they wouldn’t decode…?

  Fenix looked at him and sighed. “Of course. You had to add something like this. Now we wait and pray they laugh…” she said, partly to him, partly to herself.

  “Sister, but why did you agree? After all…” Tian wanted to rant again.

  It pissed him off. Months of work to figure out how to launch the Gate, apart from discussions about its necessity—because some morons couldn’t understand that they couldn’t avoid Unio intervention. Even more months to gather materials transparently and prepare a politically neutral message.

  They said okay but added, ‘Let’s give them fifteen minutes to reply.’

  Not a week, not a day. Fifteen minutes.

  “They agreed to this whole plan because they know Unio and they hope it will be like it was,” Fenix started saying.

  “So, it was like we had talked about. We would send it, and then nothing, only silence? How did you know? Who confirmed it?” Tian asked.

  “Yes, and yes. One of them told me about it last night, when—” She didn’t finish her story.

  Maybe it was better not to know how his sister extracted what she extracted, but that was certain then. Cowards. They counted on Unio not to respond. Then they would say, ‘Ha-ha, they didn’t give a damn about us; why open the Gate again?’

  Idiots.

  Tian looked at the Gate. What a beautiful structure. Massive, round. A spaceship wouldn’t be able to fly through, but smaller ships could.

  The main Gate, created straight from the guts of the original spaceships, using the Sect’s old knowledge on how to use energy this way…

  He checked his watch. Ten minutes.

  “Warming up!” Tian shouted suddenly, startling both his sister and his dog, Sara.

  As agreed, they were to open the Gate for a moment, a second time, in fifteen minutes. It was time to start. He began to warm up the mechanism. Thirteen. Fourteen. The energy ball was ready again.

  “Now,” Tian said, this time without shouting.

  Everyone loaded their energy, and Tian launched his Element. “It’s good,” he confirmed out loud.

  The Gate activated. A minute later, it turned off. But he knew, he was certain, and he noticed that everyone else saw it too.

  Unio replied, and also, they agreed to the plan.

  … Wait. It wasn’t Unio anymore; they were calling themselves the Empire. Clearly, things had changed. How unexpected. Tian looked again at the message and quickly scrolled down—oh, fuck.

  They added the map of the strip clubs he asked about. “I’m dead.”